History

The post of DCI was established by
President
Harry Truman on January 23, 1946, with Admiral
Sidney Souers occupying the position; it thus predates the establishment
of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was created by the
National Security Act of 1947, which also created the National Security
Council, while formally defining the duties of the Director of Central
Intelligence.

Until April 2005, the DCI also served as the de-facto director of the CIA,
and he was often referred to colloquially as the "CIA Director." After the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the
subsequent investigation by the
9/11 Commission, a movement grew to re-organize the Intelligence
Community. That movement prompted the creation, on April 21, 2005, of the
Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (DNI), whose responsibilities covered
heading the Intelligence Community and advising the NSC. The same legislation
also created the office of the chief administrator of the CIA, which is headed
by separate
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The position of DCI then
expired.

Porter J. Goss was the 19th and final DCI to also serve as the director of
the CIA.

Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, 1947–1950

Rear Admiral
Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central
Intelligence (i.e., full Director of Central Intelligence[clarification
needed]). During his tenure, a National Security Council
Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948, (NSC 10/2) further
gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile
foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups
but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility
for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."[1]
Those operations, however, were initially conducted by other agencies such as
the
Office of Policy Coordination. See
Approval of Clandestine and Covert Operations and
Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for details of the eventual merger of
these operations with the CIA, as well as how the equivalent functions were
done in other countries.

Walter
Bedell Smith, 1950–1953

During the first years of its existence, other branches of the
U.S. Federal government did not exercise very much supervision over the
Central Intelligence Agency. Supposedly justified by the desire to match and
defeat
Soviet actions throughout the
Eastern Hemisphere, it undertook a task that many believed could be
accomplished only through an approach similar to the Soviet intelligence
agencies, under names including
NKVD,
MVD,
NKGB,
MGB, and KGB.
Those Soviet organizations also had domestic responsibilities.

Allen W.
Dulles 1953–1961

The rapid expansion of the CIA, and a developed sense of independence under
the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
Allen Dulles exacerbated the problem of the U.S. Intelligence Community's
freedom from independent review. After the
armed landing of Cuban exiles at the
Bay of
Pigs, Cuba,
in 1961,
President
Kennedy discharged and replaced Dulles. Dulles had been an O.S.S. veteran
from
World War II. His autobiography,[2]
is more noteworthy for giving insight into the mindset of key people in the
field, than it is in giving a detailed description of the CIA and its
operations.

John McCone
1961–1965

President
John F. Kennedy exercised greater supervision, and he appointed a
Republican with a general
engineering
background, John McCone. McCone, despite a lack of intelligence agency
background, is often considered one of the most competent DCIs, and an
excellent manager. He directed the CIA during the
Cuban Missile Crisis. The agency stepped up its activity in Southeast Asia
under President
Lyndon Johnson. McCone resigned from his position of DCI in April 1965,
believing himself to have been unappreciated by President Johnson. McCone's
final policy memorandum to Johnson argued that expansion of the
War in Vietnam would arouse national and world discontent over the war,
before it defeated the
North Vietnamese regime.

William Raborn
1965–1966

Raborn, a distinguished
naval officer who directed the design and development of the entire
Polaris
ballistic missile submarine system, had a somewhat short and unhappy
tenure as the DCI. His background included no
foreign relations experience, and intelligence experience only concerning
naval operations. CIA historians have said "Raborn did not 'take' to the
DCI job", in their opinion.[3]
Raborn resigned as the DCI on June 30, 1966, having served for only fourteen
months. He was then replaced by his deputy,
Richard Helms.

Richard M.
Helms 1966–1973

Helms was an OSS and CIA veteran, and the first DCI to have risen through
the ranks at CIA. Helms became the Director of the OSO after the CIA's
disastrous role in the attempted
Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. After falling out with the
Kennedys, he was sent off to
Vietnam
where he oversaw the coup to overthrow President
Ngo
Dinh Diem. Helms was made the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
under Admiral
William Raborn. A year later, in 1966, he was appointed as the Director.

In the early 1970s, partially as a result of the
Watergate Affair break-ins under President
Richard M. Nixon, the
United States Congress took a more active role in intelligence agencies,
as did independent commissions such as the 1975
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United
States, also called the
Rockefeller Commission after its chairman. Revelations about past CIA
activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign
leaders, illegal domestic spying on American citizens, drew considerable
Congressional oversight that had not been previously exercised. It was
determined, by several investigating committees, that the CIA had given
inappropriate assistance to persons affiliated with the White House and the
1972 Nixon reelection campaign.[citation
needed] Certain of the individuals involved in the Watergate
break-ins had worked, in the past, for the CIA. In an audio tape provoking
President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff,
H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of the Watergate
Affair would "open the whole can of worms" about the
Bay Of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to
cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national
security".[4]

The ease of Helms's role under President
Lyndon Johnson changed with the arrival of President
Richard Nixon and Nixon's
national security advisor
Henry Kissinger. After the debacle of Watergate, from which Helms
succeeded in distancing the CIA as far as possible, the Agency came under much
tighter congressional control. Nixon, however, considered Helms to be
disloyal, and fired him as DCI in 1973. Helms was the only DCI convicted for
irregularities in office; his autobiography describes his reactions to the
charges.[5]

James R. Schlesinger
1973

On 2 February 1973 he became the Director of Central Intelligence,
following the previous director Richard Helms, after he had been fired for his
refusal to block the Watergate Affair's investigation. Schlesinger's first
words upon becoming the DCI were, reportedly,[by
whom?] "I'm here to make sure you don't screw Richard Nixon."
Although his service at the CIA was short, barely six months, it was a stormy
one as he again undertook comprehensive organizational and personnel changes.
Schlesinger became so unpopular at the CIA Headquarters in
Langley, Virginia, that a security camera was installed opposite his
official portrait for fear that it would be vandalized. By this time he had a
reputation as a tough, forthright, and outspoken administrator.[citation
needed] Schesinger's appointment as the
Secretary of Defense cut short his service as the DCI. He commissioned
reports—known as the "Family
Jewels"—on illegal activities by the Agency.

William Colby
1973–1976

Colby was another intelligence professional who was promoted to the top
job. His autobiography was entitled "Honorable Men", and he believed that a
nation had to believe such people made up its intelligence service.[6]
In December 1974, Investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page
article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated
foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some seven thousand
American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation
CHAOS).

Colby's tenure as DCI congressional investigations into alleged U.S.
intelligence malfeasance over the preceding twenty-five years. Colby
cooperated, not out of a desire for major reforms, but in the belief that the
actual scope of such misdeeds was not great enough to cause lasting damage to
the CIA's reputation. He believed that cooperating with Congress was the only
way to save the Agency from dissolution. Colby also believed that the CIA had
a moral obligation to cooperate with the Congress and demonstrate that the CIA
was accountable to the Constitution. This caused a major rift within the CIA
ranks, with many old-line officers such as former DCI Richard Helms believing
that the CIA should have resisted congressional intrusion.

Colby's time as DCI was also eventful on the world stage. Shortly after he
assumed leadership, the
Yom Kippur War broke out, an event that surprised not only the American
intelligence agencies but also the Israelis. This intelligence surprise
reportedly affected Colby's credibility with the Nixon Administration.
Meanwhile, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist
forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for Colby, who had
dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there. Events
in the arms control field, Angola, the Middle East, and elsewhere also
demanded attention.

William Colby's death, officially in a boating accident, happened on the
same date when a New York prosecutor got permission to set up a grand jury to
investigate the role of the CIA in the death of
Frank
Olson who worked at
Fort
Detrick, Maryland and was involved in chemical warfare research. Frank
Olson was one of the experimental subjects in the CIA
MKULTRA experiments with
LSD
and other drugs. He did not give informed consent for the CIA to experiment on
him, as would be ethically required under the medical research principles of
the
Declaration of Helsinki. The CIA claimed that he committed suicide by
jumping out of a hotel window but the family did not believe this explanation.
An autopsy of the remains of Frank Olson had found blunt force trauma to the
head, which might have come from the fall, or been inflicted before the fall.
The 1953 medical report done immediately after Dr. Olson’s death indicated
that there were cuts and abrasions on the body. In the summer of 1994,a second
autopsy was performed by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic science
at the National Law Center at George Washington University, his team searched
the body for any cuts and abrasions and didn’t find any. Professor Starrs
found a large hematoma on the left side of Dr. Olson's head and a large injury
on his chest. The team concluded that the injury on his head and chest did not
happen during the fall. They most likely happened in the room before falling
out of the window.

George H.
W. Bush 1976–1977

Bush's confirmation as the Director of Central Intelligence was opposed by
many politicians and citizens who were still reeling from the Watergate
scandal (when Bush was the head of the
Republican National Committee, and a steadfast defender of Nixon) and the
Church Committee investigating whether CIA-ordered foreign assassinations
were being directed towards domestic officials, including President Kennedy.
Many arguments against Bush's initial confirmation were that he was too
partisan for the office.
The Washington Post,
George
Will, and Senator
Frank
Church were some notable figures opposed to Bush's nomination. After a
pledge by Bush not to run for either President or Vice-President in 1976,
opposition to his nomination died down.

Bush served as the DCI for 355 days, from January 30, 1976, to January 20,
1977.[7]
The CIA had been rocked by a series of revelations, including disclosures
based on investigations by the Senate's
Church Committee, about the CIA's illegal and unauthorized activities, and
Bush was credited with helping to restore the agency's morale.[8]
On February 18, 1976, President Ford issued
Executive Order 11905, which established policy guidelines and
restrictions for individual intelligence agencies, and clarified intelligence
authorities and responsibilities. Bush was given 90 days to implement the new
order, which called for a major reorganization of the American Intelligence
Community and firmly stated that intelligence activities could not be directed
against American citizens.[9]
In his capacity as DCI, Bush gave national security briefings to
Jimmy
Carter both as a presidential candidate and as President-elect, and
discussed the possibility of remaining in that position in a Carter
administration.[10]

Stansfield
Turner 1977–1981

A
U.S. Naval Academy classmate of
Jimmy
Carter's, Turner enjoyed the confidence of the White House, but his
emphasis on technical methods of intelligence collection, such as
SIGINT and
IMINT, and his apparent dislike for, and firing of,
HUMINT specialists made him quite unpopular within the CIA. Turner
eliminated more than 800 operational positions in what was called the "halloween
massacre." This organizational direction is notable because his successor
William Casey was seen to have a completely opposite approach, focusing
much of his attention on HUMINT. Turner gave notable testimony to Congress
revealing much of the extent of the
MKULTRA program, which the CIA ran from the early 1950s to late 1960s.
Reform and simplification of the intelligence community's multilayered secrecy
system was one of Turner's significant initiatives, but produced no results by
the time he left office. He also wrote a book on his experience at CIA.[11]

During Turner's term as head of the CIA, he became outraged when former
agent
Frank Snepp published a book called Decent Interval which exposed
incompetence among senior American government personnel during the
fall of Saigon.[12]
accused Snepp of breaking the secrecy agreement required of all CIA agents,
and then later was forced to admit under cross-examination that he had never
read the agreement signed by Snepp.[13]
Regardless, the CIA ultimately won its case against Snepp at the
U.S. Supreme Court. The Court forced Snepp to turn over all his profits
from Decent Interval and to seek preclearance of any future writings
about intelligence work for the rest of his life.[14]
The ultimate irony was that the CIA would later rely on the Snepp legal
precedent
in forcing Turner to seek preclearance of his own memoirs, which were highly
critical of President
Ronald Reagan's policies.[13]

In the documentary Secrets of the CIA Admiral Turner commented the
MK ULTRA project.

"It came to my attention early in my tenure as director, and I felt it
was a warning sign that if you're not alert, things can go wrong in this
organization."

William J.
Casey 1981–1987

During his tenure at the CIA, Casey played a large part in the shaping of
Reagan's
foreign policy, particularly its approach to
Soviet international activity. Based on a book,
The Terror Network, Casey believed that the Soviet Union was the source of
most terrorist activity in the world, in spite of CIA analysts providing
evidence that this was in fact
black propaganda by the CIA itself. Casey obtained a report from a
professor that agreed with his view, which convinced
Ronald Reagan that there was a threat.[15]

Casey oversaw the re-expansion of the Intelligence Community, in particular
the CIA, to funding and human resource levels greater than those before
resource cuts during the
Carter Administration. During his tenure restrictions were lifted on the
use of the CIA to directly, covertly influence the internal and foreign
affairs of countries relevant to American policy.

Hours before Casey was scheduled to testify before Congress about his
knowledge of
Iran-Contra, he was reported to have been rendered incapable of speech,
and was later hospitalized. In his 1987 book,[16]
Washington Post reporter
Bob
Woodward, who had interviewed Casey on numerous occasions, said that he
had gained entry to Casey's hospital room for a final, four-minute long
encounter—a claim that was met with disbelief in many quarters, and adamant
denial by Casey's wife, Sofia. According to Woodward, when he asked Casey if
he knew about the diversion of funds to the
Nicaraguan
Contras, "His head jerked up hard. He stared, and finally nodded yes."[17]

William H.
Webster 1987–1991

Webster came from a legal background, including serving as a Federal judge
and as the
Director of the FBI. He was expected, with this background, to clear out
all legal irregularities at CIA. Repercussions from the
Iran-Contra arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the
Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991.[16]
It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where
the United States is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required
an authorizing chain of command, including an official, Presidential finding
report, and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification".

Robert M.
Gates 1991–1993

Gates was nominated (for the second time) for the post of Director of
Central Intelligence by President
George H. W. Bush on May 14, 1991, confirmed by the
United States Senate on November 5, and sworn in on November 6, becoming
the only career officer in the CIA's history (as of 2009) to rise from an
entry-level CIA employee to the Director of the CIA.[18]

The final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, issued
on August 4, 1993, said that Gates "was close to many figures who played
significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have
known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did
not warrant indictment..."[19]

R. James
Woolsey 1993–1995

As the Director of Central Intelligence, Woolsey is notable for having a
very limited relationship with President Bill Clinton. According to the
journalist
Richard Miniter:

Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever
have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare.
They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad
relationship with the President. It just didn't exist."[20]

Another quotation about his relationship with President Clinton, according
to Paula Kaufman of
Insight Magazine:

Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn?
That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton.[21]

David Halberstam noted in his book War in a Time of Peace that
Clinton chose Woolsey as the CIA director because the Clinton campaign had
courted neo-conservatives leading up to the 1992 election, promising to be
tougher on Taiwan, Bosnia, and on human rights in China, and it was decided
that they ought to give at least one neo-conservative a job in the
Administration.

John M. Deutch
1995–1996

In 1995, President
Bill
Clinton appointed Deutch as the Director of Central Intelligence (cabinet
rank in the Clinton administration). However, Deutch was initially reluctant
to accept this appointment. As the head of the
CIA, Deutch continued the policy of his predecessor
R. James Woolsey to declassify records pertaining to American
covert operations during the
Cold War.[22]
Deutsch put restraints on what he considered to be
politically incorrect agent recruitment and sought to encourage more
diversity at the CIA in order to include more women and minorities in its
ranks.[23]

In 1996, the
U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a
Congressional report estimating that: "Hundreds of employees on a daily basis
are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in
the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch
them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000
times a year) DO officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to
foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the U.S. but also
endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and,
more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."[24][25]

In this same document, the committee wrote, "Considering these facts and
recent history, which has shown that the [Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency], whether he wants to or not, is held accountable for overseeing the
[Clandestine Service], the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS
and hold him fully and directly responsible to him."[25]

Soon after Deutch's departure from the CIA in 1996 it was revealed that
classified materials had been kept on several of Deutch's laptop computers
designated as unclassified. In January 1997, the CIA began a formal security
investigation of the matter. Senior management members at the CIA declined to
fully pursue the security breach. More than two years after his departure, the
matter was referred to the
Department of Justice, where Attorney General
Janet
Reno declined to prosecute. She did, however, recommend an investigation
to determine whether Deutch should retain his security clearance.[26]
President Clinton issued a Presidential pardon on his last day in office.[27]

Tenet embarked on a mission to regenerate the CIA, which had fallen on hard
times since the end of the Cold War. The number of new trainee agents
recruited each year had fallen to an all-time low, a 25-percent decline from
the Cold War
peak. Tenet appealed to the original mission of the agency, which had been to
"prevent another Pearl Harbor". The problem was to foresee where danger might
come from in the post–Cold War world. Tenet focused on potential problems such
as "the transformation of Russia and China", "rogue states" like North Korea,
Iran, and Iraq, and terrorism.[28]

How could [an intelligence] community without a strategic plan tell the
President of the United States just four days after 9/11 how to attack the
Afghan sanctuary and operate against
al-Qaeda
in ninety-two countries around the world?

On September 15, 2001. Tenet presented the
Worldwide Attack Matrix, a blueprint for what became known as the
War On Terror.[30]
He proposed firstly to send CIA teams into Afghanistan to collect intelligence
on, and mount covert operations against, al-Qaeda and the
Taliban.
The teams would act jointly with military
Special Operations
units. "President Bush later praised this proposal, saying it had been a
turning point in his thinking."[31]

After the
September 11, 2001, attacks, many observers criticized the
American Intelligence Community for numerous "intelligence failures" as
one of the major reasons why the attacks were not prevented.[30]
In August 2007, part of a secret report written by the
CIA
Inspector General was made public (originally written in 2005 but kept
secret). Its 19-page summary states that Tenet knew the dangers of Al Qaeda
well before September 2001, but that the leadership of the CIA did not do
enough to prevent any attacks. Tenet reacted to the publication of this report
by calling it "flat wrong".[32]

Bob Woodward, in his book
Plan of Attack,[33]
wrote that Tenet privately lent his personal authority to the intelligence
reports about
weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in
Iraq. At a
meeting on December 12, 2002, he assured Bush that the evidence against
Saddam Hussein amounted to a "slam
dunk case." After several months of refusing to confirm this statement,
Tenet later stated that this remark was taken out of context. (Tenet indicated
that the comment was made pursuant to a discussion about how to convince the
American people to support invading Iraq, and that, in his opinion, the best
way to convince the people would be by explaining the dangers posed by Iraq's
WMD i.e., the public relations sale of the war via the WMD, according to
Tenet, would be a "slam dunk").[34]
The search following the
2003 invasion of Iraq by American, British, and other international forces
yielded no stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq. Tenet and his Director of Operations
resigned at about this same time, and it has been suggested these resignations
were in penance over the WMD issue in Iraq.

Porter J. Goss
2004–2005

During his junior year at Yale,
Porter
Goss was recruited by the CIA. He spent much of the 1960s—roughly from
1960 until 1971—working for the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine
services of the CIA. There he first worked in Latin America and the
Caribbean
and later in
Europe. The full details are not known due to the classified nature of the
CIA, but Goss has said that he had worked in
Haiti,
Santo Domingo, and
Mexico. Goss,
who has said that he has recruited and trained foreign agents, worked in
Miami for much of the time. Goss was involved in the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, telling
The Washington Post in 2002 that he had done some "small-boat
handling" and had "some very interesting moments in the
Florida Straits."

He served in Congress for 16 years until his appointment as Director of the
CIA. While in the House, Goss consistently and emphatically defended the CIA
and supported strong budget increases for the Agency, even during a time of
tight budgets and
Clintonian slashes to other parts of the intelligence budgets. In
mid-2004, Goss took a very strong position, during what had already been
announced as his last congressional term, urging specific reforms and
corrections in the way the CIA carried out its activities, lest it become
"just another government bureaucracy."

After growing pressure, Congress established the
Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the
Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, a joint inquiry of the two
intelligence committees, led by Goss and Senator
Bob
Graham. Goss and Graham made it clear that their goal was not to identify
specific wrongdoing: Graham said the inquiry would not play "the blame game
about what went wrong from an intelligence perspective,", and Goss said, "This
is not a who-shall-we-hang type of investigation. It is about where are the
gaps in America's defense and what do we do about it type of investigation."[35]
The inquiry's final report was released in December 2002 and focused entirely
on the CIA and
FBI's
activities, including no information on the White House's activities.
Ray
McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a frequent commentator on
intelligence issues, believed the report showed that Goss gave "clear priority
to providing political protection for the president" when conducting the
inquiry. Goss chiefly blamed President
Bill
Clinton for the recent CIA failures. He confided in a reporter: "The one
thing I lose sleep about is thinking what could I have done better, how could
I have gotten more attention on this problem sooner." When asked whether he
ever brought up his concerns with the administration, Goss claimed he had met
three times with Clinton to discuss "certain problems". The upshot? "He was
patient and we had an interesting conversation but it was quite clear he
didn’t value the intelligence community to the degree President Bush does."

Goss was nominated to become the new director on August 10, 2004. The
appointment was challenged by some prominent
Democrats). Sen.
John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV),
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed concerns that
Goss was too politically partisan, given his public remarks against Democrats
while serving as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Another
Democratic member of the committee,
Ron Wyden
(D-OR),
expressed concerns that given Goss's history within and ties to the CIA, he
would be too disinclined to push for institutional change. In an interview
carried out by
Michael Moore's production company on March 3, 2004, Goss described
himself as "probably not qualified" for a job within the CIA, because the
language skills the Agency now seeks are not languages he speaks and because
the people applying today for positions within the CIA's four directorates
have such keen technical and analytic skills, which he did not have when he
applied to the Agency in the early 60s.

He brought with him five personal staff that were to implement change that
became unpopular with CIA professionals. Steve Kappes—the Director of
Operations—and his subordinates including
Michael Sulick, Kappes' then-deputy. Although Kappes came back to a
responsible position, it has been reported that he quit the Agency rather than
carry out a request by Goss to reassign Michael Sulick. Following Goss's
departure, both Kappes and Sulick have returned to positions of higher
authority in the U.S. Intelligence Community. Kappes is the Deputy Director of
the CIA and Sulick was appointed Director of the National Clandestine Service
on September 14, 2007.

Speculations on the reason for his departure include a desire to have
military agency heads, or, perhaps more likely,

For many analysts, Goss' departure was inevitable, given the widespread
perception that the White House had lost confidence in his ability to
reorganise the CIA. Goss' departure appears to have been due, at least in
part, to his repeated clashes with John Negroponte who was appointed in 2005
as the US Director of National Intelligence, a new post created to
co-ordinate all 16 of the US intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the
Al-Qaeda attacks.[36]

On June 27, 2007, the CIA published two collections of previously
classified documents that outlined various activities of doubtful legality.

The first collection, the "Family
Jewels", consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a
directive in 1973 from the Director of Central Intelligence, James
Schlesinger, requesting information about activities inconsistent with the
Agency's charter.

The second collection, the so-called "CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers", consists of
147 documents and 11,000 pages of research from 1953 to 1973 concerning the
Soviet Union's and Chinese leadership hierarchies, and Sino-Soviet relations.[40]

Leon Panetta
2009–present

On January 5, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated
Leon
Panetta for the position of the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency. After his nomination, journalists, politicians, and media
agencies—such as The
Economist—raised concerns about his lack of intelligence agency
experience.[41]
Time magazine commented that "[m]ore than a few eyebrows went up when
word broke".[42]

The Economist also speculated that Obama had selected Panetta
because he needed a CIA director "untainted" by the Bush Administration's
policies on torture and its handling of the
Iraq War.[42]
David Ignatius said that advisers to Mr. Obama have told him that Panetta was
chosen to provide political defense for the CIA: "Panetta is a Washington
heavyweight with the political clout to protect the Agency and help it rebuild
after a traumatic eight years under George Bush, when it became a kind of
national pincushion." Ignatius further explains that Panetta does have
tangential exposure to intelligence operations as director of the OMB and as
the Chief of Staff for President Clinton, where he "sat in on the daily
intelligence briefings as [the] Chief of Staff, and he reviewed the nation's
most secret intelligence-collection and covert-action programs in his previous
post as director of the Office of Management and Budget." Mr. Panetta also
served on the Iraq Study group.[citation
needed]

The former Director of Central Intelligence,
R. James Woolsey, Jr., is a supporter of Mr. Panetta, whom he has compared
favorably with the
Kennedy-era CIA leader
John McCone. He described Panetta as "a very able individual with a
successful career".[41]

CIA Scandles

1947 Jul 26

President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department
of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency,
CIA, FBI, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the CIA from
operating within the US. The CIA was transformed from the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), founded by Gen. William Donovan (1941), and was
led by Adm. Walter Chilcott Ford (d.1999 at 96) until 1949.

1947

Frank
Wisner was recruited by Dean Acheson to join the US State Department's
Office of Occupied Territories. In 1948, the CIA created a covert action
wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). Frank
Wisner was put in charge of the operation and recruited many of his old
friends from the NYC Carter Ledyard law firm. Wisner later coined the term
“mighty Wurlitzer” to describe the orchestration of the agency’s activities.

2010

Bob Woodward authored “Obama’s Wars.” In it he
alleged that some 3,000 CIA operatives are active in the tribal regions
of Pakistan.

2011 Jan 23

In Pakistan Sultan Amir Tarar, a former
Pakistani spy who helped the Taliban rise to power in Afghanistan, was
reported to have died under captivity 10 months after he was seized in
northwest Pakistan. Tarar, better known as Col. Imam, played a major
role in funneling Pakistani support and training to Afghans fighting
Soviet rule in the 1980s, a push in large part financed by the CIA. On
Feb 19 the Pakistani Taliban claimed it had killed Tarar.

2011 Feb 14

Iran’s security forces cut phone lines and
blockaded the home of an Iranian opposition leader in attempts to stop
him attending a planned rally in support of Egypt's uprising.
Eyewitnesses reported sporadic clashes in central Tehran's Enghelab or
Revolution square between security forces and opposition protesters.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who is on a visit to Iran, urged
governments in the Middle East to listen to the demands of their people.
Student Sanee Zhaleh (26) was shot dead during the opposition rally.
Authorities later announced the arrest today of an Iranian man allegedly
working for the CIA.

2011 Mar 16

Pakistan freed CIA contractor Raymond Allen
Davis, who had shot and killed two Pakistani men, after the US paid
$2.34 million in "blood money" to the victims' families. Davis, who was
acquitted in court, claimed he acted in self-defense when he killed the
two men on the street in the eastern city of Lahore.

2011 Mar 30

US officials revealed that the CIA has sent
small teams of operatives into rebel-held eastern Libya while the White
House debates whether to arm the opposition. The British government said
Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa had arrived in Britain from
Tunisia and resigned.

The
National Council for a Free Europe was set up, seemingly the initiative of
American philanthropists, to help refugees. It was later revealed to be a
CIA front group.

1951

A CIA
assessment of Japanese agents said: "Frequently they resorted to padding or
outright fabrication of information for the purposes of prestige or profit."
Among the agents was Col. Masanobu Tsuji, a fanatical Japanese militarist
and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese
civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. Other agents in
US-funded operations included mob boss and war profiteer Yoshio Kodama, and
Takushiro Hattori, former private secretary to Hideki Tojo. Documents with
this information were declassified in 2005 and 2006.

1952 Nov 29

A plane
carrying CIA paramilitary officers on their first overseas assignment, John
T. Downey (22) of New Britain, Conn., and Richard G. Fecteau (25), of Lynn,
Mass., was shot down over Jilin province. Pilots, Robert C. Snoddy (31), a
native of Roseburg, Ore., and Norman A. Schwartz (29) of Louisville, Ky.,
did not survive. Downey and Fecteau were captured. They had been assigned to
a covert program called "Third Force," intended to create a resistance
network. Fecteau was released by China in December 1971 and Downey in March
1973, shortly after President Richard Nixon publicly acknowledged Downey's
CIA connection.

1953 Aug 15

In Iran
a CIA plot, masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt, to unseat PM Mossadeq failed.
A 2nd attempt succeeded on August 19.

1953 Aug 19

Gen'l.
Zahedi ousted PM Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup
that left 300 dead. Britain and the US CIA under Allen Dulles planned a
secret mission to overthrow the government. PM Mossadeq had sought to
nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. The US government made a formal
apology for the coup in 2000. A 1954 CIA description of the coup was made
public in 2000. In 1979 Kermit Roosevelt (d.2000) published “Countercoup:
The Struggle for the Control of Iran,” an account of his role in the coup.
In 2010 Darioush Bayandor authored “Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadeq
Revisited.”

1954 Mar

A
history of the CIA sponsored 1953 coup in Iran was written by Donald N.
Wilbur (1908-1997), an expert in Persian architecture and one of the
"leading planners" of the operation "TP-Ajax."

1956

Winston
Scott (1909-1971) was appointed as the American CIA station chief in Mexico.

1957

The
first team of 6 Tibetans trained at a Saipan US CIA base and then airdropped
back into Tibet with modern weapons and radios.

1958

The US CIA began airdropping weapons over Tibet.

1958

A secret
war in Indonesia ended abruptly when Allen Pope, a CIA contract pilot, was
downed in a dogfight. Pope was carrying a trove of documents that revealed
the extent of US involvement. The CIA had been sending weapons and advisers
to anti-government rebels on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island as mercenaries
mounted combat sorties in a fleet of unmarked B-26 bombers. Indonesia later
received a batch of 10 C-130 transport planes from the US in exchange for
Pope’s release.

1960 Aug

The CIA
recruited a former FBI agent to approach two of America's most-wanted
mobsters and gave them poison pills meant for Fidel Castro during his first
year in power. This was only made public in 2007 in declassified papers. The
CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, then a top aide to Howard Hughes in
Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the
representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed
because of their lost gambling operations.

1960
1979

The US
CIA launched a secret domestic spying program dubbed MHCHAOS aimed at the US
anti-war underground press. The events were later described in the 1997 book
by Angus McKenzie (d.1997): "Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home."

1961 Jan 17

Patrice
Lumumba (34), the 1st premier Congo, was murdered after 67 days in office.

1961 Apr 17

About
1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles, Brigade 2506, launched the disastrous Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of
Fidel Castro. The US clandestinely invaded Cuba in the Bay of Pigs operation
and the operation failed completely without any of the promised air support
from the United States. Cuban forces killed 200 rebels and captured 1,197 in
less than 72 hours. The command vessel Marsopa and supply ship Houston were
sunk and an entire battalion was lost. 26 survivors were rescued after 3
days of fighting. A single copy of a CIA report written by inspector general
Lyman Kirkpatrick was made public in 1998. The operation, which had been
devised during the Eisenhower Administration, was nonetheless endorsed by
the new president, John F. Kennedy. In 1979 Peter Wyden wrote “Bay of Pigs:
The Untold Story.” Portion of the 1961 Taylor Report was made public in 1977
and 1986. Most of the report was made public in 2000 and it showed that the
CIA knew that the Soviets knew the exact date of the attack. In 2009
Guadeloupe apologized to Cuba for allowing the CIA to train Cuban exiles on
its soil.

1961 Apr 19

Cuban
forces shot down a B-26 bomber piloted by Captain Thomas Ray north of Larga
beach, an area they controlled. Ray was flying the bomber from Nicaragua
while on contract to the US CIA. In a 2004 trial in the US, forensics on
Ray’s body proved that the cause of his death was a small bullet entry thru
the head.

1963

George
Joannides, a CIA agent, was in charge of the Revolutionary Students
Directorate (DRE), one of the most powerful Cuban anti-Castro organizations
in Miami. A few months before the assassination of JFK the DRE had
significant contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald tried to infiltrate
the New Orleans branch of the DRE.

1963

Winston
Scott served as American CIA station chief in Mexico during the time that
Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy there. In 2008 Jefferson Morley
authored “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the
CIA.” Morley proposed that Scott later covered up CIA operations that
involved Oswald.

1964 Jan 16

Pres.
Johnson approved OPLAN 34A-64, calling for stepped up infiltration and
covert operations against North Vietnam to be transferred from the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the military."

1964 Feb

Yuri
Nosenko (1927-2008), Soviet KGB officer, defected under CIA guidance in
Geneva. He had begun passing information in June, 1962. He was incarcerated
for his first 3 years in the US and settled there under a new name in 1969.

1964 Nov

The US
HONETOL committee was formed to look into the question of a mole in the CIA,
based on information from Soviet defector Anatoly Golitsin. It was in
existence to April 1965, and consisted of James Jesus Angleton, Newton S.
Miler and Bruce Solie from the CIA's Office of Security, FBI domestic
intelligence chief William C. Sullivan, FBI CIA liaison Sam Papich and two
others. The investigations damaged many careers including that of case
officer Richard Kovich (1926-2006). In 1992 David Wise authored “Molehunt:
The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA.”

1965 Nov 24

Congo
had a military coup under Gen. Mobutu and Pres. Kasavubu was overthrown.
Larry Devlin, US CIA station chief, had encouraged Mobutu to launch the
coup. In 2007 Devlin authored “Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold
War in a Hot Zone.”

1967 Feb 14

Ramparts
Magazine published an ad in the NY Times and Washington Post saying “In its
March issue, Ramparts magazine will document how the CIA has infiltrated and
subverted the world of American student leaders over the past fifteen
years.”

1967

Luis
Posada Carriles, Cuban-born CIA agent since 1965, moved to Venezuela and
rose to become head of a government counterintelligence security agency.

1968

The A-12
Blackbird spy plane was retired. Lockheed Martin had built 15 such planes, a
forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird. It had originated as part of the CIA’s
“Oxcart” program.

Vu Ngoc
Nha (d.2002), top aide to presidents Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu, was
arrested in Saigon. The CIA uncovered him as the head of a Communist
espionage ring. He and 2 others were convicted of treason and sentenced to
life in prison.

1969

A CIA
report on Soviet activities in developing biological and chemical weapons
was "removed" by order of Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor,
presumably so it would not interfere with arms-control efforts.

1970 Oct 25

In Chile
a US CIA-backed kidnapping attempt was botched and left Gen. Rene Schneider
dead. Schneider had opposed a US plan for a military coup. In 2001 his widow
and 3 sons filed a suit against Henry Kissinger, Richard Helms and several
other former US bureaucrats.

1971

US CIA
funding for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was disclosed. In 2000 Arch
Puddington, deputy director of RFE/RL’s new York bureau from 1985 to 1993,
authored "Broadcasting Freedom." The Munich headquarters were closed in 1994
and the organization moved to an afterlife in Prague.

1972 Mar 23

Pres.
Nixon discussed his orders to undermine Chilean democracy after the leak of
corporate papers revealing collaboration between ITT and the CIA to rollback
the election of socialist leader Salvador Allende.

1972 May 25

The
final US CORONA reconnaissance satellite was launched.

1972 Jun 23

President Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a
plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation.
Revelation of the tape recording of this conversation sparked Nixon's
resignation in 1974. In the "smoking gun" tape Pres. Nixon told his chief of
Staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell top CIA officials that "the president believes
this (in reference to Watergate) is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs
thing up again." Nixon counseled Haldeman on how to use deception to thwart
an FBI investigation on how Watergate was financed.

1973 May

CIA
director James R. Schlesinger (b.1929), in response to the unfolding
Watergate scandal, ordered employees to report activities which might be
construed to be outside the legislative charter of the agency.

1973 Jul 2

CIA
director James R. Schlesinger (b.1929), nominated on May 10 by Pres. Nixon,
became the 12th US Sec. of Defense.

1973 Jul 13

In Chile
a strike began that lasted until the September 11 coup. More than a million
workers were on strike demanding that Allende go. American CIA funding was
involved.

1973 Sep 4

William E Colby (1920-1996), became the 10th director of the
CIA.

1973 Sep 21

A secret
CIA report indicated that severe repression was planned in Chile and that
300 students were killed in the technical university when they refused to
surrender to the military. The report was made public in 1999.

1974 Aug

The CIA
in Project Azorian recovered part of a Soviet submarine that had sunk in the
Pacific on March 8, 1968. A 100 foot section of K-129 was pulled in by the
Hughes Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes and the bodies of 6
Russian sailors. The US Navy’s fully submersible dry dock, called the Hughes
Mining Barge, was used under the Glomar Explorer to position a claw to
recover the submarine. Claude Barnes Capehart worked on the Howard Hughes’
deep-sea research vessel, Glomar Explorer, that under CIA sponsorship raised
part of the Soviet submarine. Later in Chowchilla, Ca., he told his
girlfriend that he was in Texas when Kennedy was assassinated, and that
"Oswald wasn’t the only one involved." Just before a scheduled interview in
1989, Capehart dropped dead of a heart attack. In 1996 the Glomar Explorer
began under going remodeling for work as a deep-sea drilling ship. The barge
was later used to house the Navy’s $195 million Sea Shadow, an experimental
stealth ship made public in 1993. In 2006 the barge and Sea Shadow were put
to rest in Suisun Bay, near San Francisco.

1974

Columnist Jack Anderson blew the cover of CIA agent James Lilley, attached
to the US representative office in Beijing. In 2004 James and Jeffrey Lilley
authored “China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage and Diplomacy in
Asia.”

1975 Jan 4

Pres.
Ford’s signed Executive Order No. 11828 on CIA Activities within the US. He
directed the Commission, chaired by VP Nelson A. Rockefeller, to determine
whether or not any domestic CIA activities exceeded the Agency's statutory
authority and to make appropriate recommendations.

1975 Jan 27

The US
Senate voted to establish a special 11-member investigating body to examine
FBI and CIA activities. Under the chairmanship of Idaho Senator Frank
Church, with Texas Senator John Tower as vice-chairman, the select committee
was given nine months and 150 staffers to complete its work. On November 20
the committee released a report, charging both US government agencies with
illegal activities.

1975 Jun 2

Vice
President Nelson Rockefeller said his commission had found no widespread
pattern of illegal activities at the Central Intelligence Agency.

1975 Jun 10

The
Rockefeller panel reported on illegal CIA files on Americans.

1975 Nov 20

An
interim report by the US Senate’s Church Committee said that the CIA failed
to assassinated Fidel Castro at least 8 times. The report also covered CIA
activity in Chile, the Congo, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere.

1975 Dec 23

Richard
S. Welch, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, was shot
and killed outside his home. The left-wing November 17 urban guerrilla group
was responsible. In 2002 Pavlos Serifis was arrested in connection with the
murder.

1975

Philip
Agee, former CIA agent, authored "Inside the Company."

1976 Jan 30

George
Bush became the 11th director of the CIA replacing William E. Colby. Bush
revived the reputation of the organization and left it Jan 20, 1977.

1976 May 19

The US
Senate established congressional oversight over the CIA with the permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

1976 Aug 9

John
Roselli (b.1905), Chicago mobster hired by the CIA to kill Castro, was found
murdered. His decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum
floating in Dumfounding Bay near Miami, Florida. Roselli had been strangled
and stabbed and his legs were sawed off.

1976 Oct 6

A Cuban
aircraft from Venezuela with 73 people onboard was blown up on a flight over
the Caribbean. Castro blamed the explosion on the US. Luis Posada Carriles,
a veteran of the Cuban exile’s war against Castro, was charged and twice
acquitted in the bombing. Venezuelan authorities kept him in jail for 9
years until his escape in 1985 when he settled in El Salvador. In April,
2005, Posada sought asylum in the US. In May, 2005, declassified documents
were made public that linked Posada to the bombing and indicated he was on
the CIA's payroll for years.

1976

A US
congressional commission found that Pres. Nixon had authorized $10 million
for a covert CIA mission to get rid of Allende in Chile. Papers to this
effect were declassified in 1998.

1976
1979

David H.
Barnett, former CIA agent, pleaded guilty in 1980 to spying for the Soviet
Union over this time while based in Indonesia. He admitted to exposing the
identities of 30 US agents.

1977 Jan 20

George
Bush left office as director of the CIA.

1977 Mar 9

Admiral
Stansfield Turner took office as head of the CIA under Pres. Carter.

1977 May

Larry
Ellison and Robert Miner founded Oracle Corp. in Belmont, Ca., after they
persuaded the CIA to let them pick up a lapsed contract for a special
database program.

1977 Nov 4

Former
CIA director Richard Helms was sentenced for withholding information on CIA
operations in Chile.

1977

Christopher Boyce was convicted of espionage. He had gained access to CIA
communications during his job at TRW and sold classified documents to the
Russian Embassy in Mexico City. His story was told in the 1985 film "The
Falcon and the Snowman." Boyce was paroled in 2003.

1977
1981

Adm.
Stansfield Turner served as the director of the CIA under President Jimmy
Carter.

1978 Jan 7

Michael
Josselson (b.1908), Estonia-born director of the Congress for Cultural
Freedom, died. The organization was a CIA front to gain the support of the
non-Communist left for the US. In 2000 Frances Stonor Saunders authored "The
Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters."

1978 Aug 18

Bechtel
Corp. hired Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, as a consultant.
Former government officials George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger were also
recently hired.

1980 Apr 23

Albert
Hakim, a wealthy arms merchant, unexpectedly skipped town the day before a
US rescue mission. The Iranian exile and CIA informant worked for the CIA
near the Turkish boarder handling the logistics of the rescue mission in
Tehran. Hakim had purchased trucks and vans and rented a warehouse on the
edge of Tehran to hide them in until they were needed for the operation. In
July, 1981, Hakim approached the CIA with a plan to gain favor with the
Iranian government by selling it arms.

1980 Oct 24

David H.
Barnett, former CIA agent, was indicted. He pleaded guilty to spying for the
Soviet Union from 1976-1979 while based in Indonesia. He admitted to
exposing the identities of 30 US agents.

Anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible
translator Chester Allen Bitterman, whom they accused of being a CIA agent.

1981 Sep

The CIA
was informed that a major Contra rebel group planned to sell drugs in the US
to pay its bills. At the same time the Reagan administration was approving a
covert CIA program to finance anti-Sandinista exile organization attempts to
overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

1981 Dec 4

President Reagan broadened the power of the CIA by allowing spying in the
U.S. This was Executive Order on Intelligence No 12,333. The order also
barred assassinations.

1981 Dec

In
Nicaragua Contra commander Enrique Bermudez (d.1991), a CIA agent, ordered
Meneses and Blandon to begin trafficking in support of the Contras. Oscar
Danilo Blandon had been recruited by Norwin Meneses to sell cocaine in
California in order to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1981
1988

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the US CIA carried out
massive covert operations against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

1981

Barry
Seal (1939-1986), gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative,
began his operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena,
Arkansas. Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins in Feb, 1986, after he
had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for
the US government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel. According to
a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then US attorney
general Edwin Meese, Seal had "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of
drugs into the US." Among the aircraft flown in and out of Mena was Seal's
C-123K cargo plane, christened Fat Lady. Records show that Fat Lady, serial
number 54-0679, was sold by Seal months before his death. On Oct 5, 1986,
Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the
Contras.

1982 Jun

"Farewell," a CIA campaign of computer sabotage, stayed secret because the
blast, estimated at three kilotons, took place in the Siberian wilderness,
with no casualties known. "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps,
turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset
pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those
acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most
monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." "At the
Abyss," by Thomas C. Reed, was published by Random House in 2004.

1983 Jul 19

In
Honduras Reyes Mata, a Cuban-trained doctor and guerrilla leader, led a unit
of 96 Nicaraguan-trained rebels and Rev. James F. Carney into the Olancho.
They were routed by the Honduran army. American CIA records, disclosed in
1998, reported that Mata was tortured and executed by the Honduran army.

1983

The
American CIA developed a manual to train security forces in Latin America.
It was titled "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual."

1983

Edwin
Wilson was convicted of running arms to Libya. In 2003 the conviction was
thrown out because prosecutors knew he worked for the CIA and misled the
court.

1984 Mar 16

William
Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by gunmen; he died
in captivity.

1984 May

Marta
Healy, a Nicaraguan exile, contacted George Morales, a champion power boat
racer and big-league drug trafficker under indictment in the US, to arrange
a meeting with contra rebels at her Miami home. Her aim was to broker a deal
to help the rebels financially. The rebels got an ok from the CIA to accept
airplanes and cash from the drug dealer while still receiving CIA money
under the table.

1984 Oct 15

The
Central Intelligence Agency's Freedom of Information Act was signed into law
by Pres. Reagan.

1984

The CIA
ran the Contra war in Nicaragua as a covert operation until this year when
Congress cut off funds. The Reagan administration transferred the operation
to Lt. Col. Oliver North, a member of the White House National Security
staff.

1984

The CIA
equipped a plane belonging to Barry Seal, a drug smuggler and informant,
with cameras. Seal flew the plane to Nicaragua and photographed an official
of the Sandinista government and a leader of a Colombian drug cartel loading
cocaine on the aircraft.

1985 Mar 8

In
Lebanon a massive car bomb killed 80 people. It targeted Grand Ayatollah
Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, but he escaped injury. Reporter Bob
Woodward later wrote that CIA director William Casey, while lying on his
deathbed, admitted personal culpability in the attack, which he suggests was
carried out with funding from Saudi Arabia.

1985 Jun 13

Aldrich
Ames handed over the names of 20 Soviets working for the CIA, to a Soviet
agent, several of whom were later executed.

1985 Jun 19

In El
Salvador 4 off-duty US Marines and 9 others were killed at sidewalk
restaurants in the Zona Rosa section of San Salvador. Pedro Antonio Andrade
Martinez (aka Mario Gonzalez), a Marxist guerrilla, was one of the reputed
masterminds of the massacre. Andrade later became an informant for the CIA
and sought US asylum. Andrade was deported from the US in 1997.

1985 Sep 6

Tscherim
Soobzokov (b.1924), a former Waffen SS soldier, was killed by a bomb at his
home in Patterson, NJ. In 2006, declassified documents of the Central
Intelligence Agency confirmed that Soobzokov had been a CIA agent in Jordan
and that the agency had misled the United States Immigration and
Naturalization Service on Soobzokov's Nazi past.

1985 Sep

Edward
Lee Howard, CIA officer, vanished from Santa Fe, NM. He fled the US to
Russia while under FBI investigation for spying for the Soviet Union. He was
accused of disclosing CIA agents in Moscow. Howard died in 2002 of a broken
neck from an accident at his residence outside Moscow. In 1995 Howard’s
memoir “Safe House” was ghost written by Richard Cote.

1985 Oct 7

The
United States announced it would no longer automatically comply with World
Court decisions. This was in response to a June 25, 1985, World Court ruling
that U.S. involvement in Nicaragua violated international law. The ruling
stemmed from a suit brought in April 1984 after revelations that the CIA had
directed the mining of Nicaraguan ports. The U.S. later vetoed two U.N.
resolutions calling for compliance to the World Court ruling.

1985 Nov 23

Retired
CIA analyst Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested and accused of spying for China.
He committed suicide a year after his conviction.

Sen.
John Kerry of Mass. went to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandinista
leadership. Kerry worked hard against Pres. Reagan’s efforts to fund CIA aid
for the contras.

1985

American
CIA clerk in Ghana Sharon Scranage pleaded guilty to disclosing the names of
US agents to her Ghanaian boyfriend. She was prosecuted under a 1982 federal
law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

1985

The
American CIA rewrote its 1983 training manual for security forces after
public uproar over another manual that taught Nicaraguan contra rebels about
neutralizing enemies and holding demonstrations that could provoke violence.

1985
1986

Celerino
Castillo III, a US agent for the DEA, reported Contra drug flights from
Nicaragua to the US to US Embassy officials. His testimony in 1996 followed
reports that the CIA was involved in smuggling drugs to southern California
with the proceeds going to support Contra forces at war with the Sandinista
government.

1985
1994

Aldrich
H. Ames, a CIA counterintelligence official, passed information over this
time to the Soviet Union that included the names of US agents. The deaths of
at least 9 agents were blamed on his disclosures. In 1994 Ames and his wife,
Rosario, pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union.

1986 Feb 19

Barry
Seal (b.1939), gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative
extraordinaire, was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel hit men
outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had testified
in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for the US
government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.

1986 Jul 11

President Ronald Reagan placed the Contras, who were fighting the government
of Nicaragua, under CIA jurisdiction.

1986 Oct 5

American
Eugene Hasenfus was captured by Sandinista soldiers after the weapons plane
he was flying in was shot down over southern Nicaragua. An airplane named
Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the
Contras. Documents found on board the aircraft and seized by the Sandinistas
included logs linking the plane with Area 51, the nation's top-secret
nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada Test Site. The doomed aircraft was
co-piloted by Wallace Blaine "Buzz" Sawyer, a native of western Arkansas,
who died in the crash. The admissions of the surviving crew member, Eugene
Hasenfus, began a public unraveling of the Iran-Contra episode.

1986 Nov 14

The
White House acknowledged CIA role in secretly shipping weapons to Iran.

1986 Dec

Sergeant
Clayton Lonetree informed his CIA station chief in Austria that he had been
spying for the Soviets. he was later sentenced to 30 years, but the sentence
was reduced and he was released in 2/96. "Dancing With The Devil, Sex,
Espionage and the US Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story" (1996) by Rodney
Barker tells the tale.

1986

Osama
bin Laden began building a tunnel complex under mountains in Afghanistan
near Pakistan as part of a CIA-funded project.

1986

Larry
Wu-Tai Chin, a retired CIA translator was convicted of spying for China
since 1952. Within days of the conviction he killed himself.

1987 Feb 2

The
White House announced the resignation of CIA director William Casey, who was
hospitalized and had undergone brain surgery.

1987 Apr 15

A jury
in Northampton, Mass., found Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 other
protesters innocent of charges stemming from a demonstration against CIA
recruiters at the University of Massachusetts.

1987 May 6

William
J. Casey, CIA Director (1981-1987), died at age 74.

1987 Jun 23

The
Iran-Contra hearings resumed with testimony from former CIA employee Glenn
A. Robinette, who said he'd installed a $14,000 security system at the home
of Lt. Col. Oliver North, then helped make it appear that North had paid for
the work.

1987 Jul 10

Lt. Col.
Oliver North told the Iran-Contra committees that the late CIA director
William J. Casey had embraced a fund created by arms sales to Iran because
it could be used for secret operations other than supplying the Contras.

1987
1991

Gen
Ramon Guillen Davila headed the CIA-financed Venezuelan National Guard
antinarcotics group. During his tenure 1-2 tons of cocaine were smuggled
into the US. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami in 1996.

1987
1991

Gen.
Ramon Guillen Davila headed the CIA-financed Venezuelan National Guard
antinarcotics group. During his tenure 1-2 tons of cocaine were smuggled
into the US. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami in 1996.

1989 Oct

In El
Salvador the CIA station in San Salvador began providing the Salvadoran
security forces with money to the resettle Marxist guerilla turned informer,
Pedro Antonio Andrade Martinez (aka Mario Gonzalez), in the US. He had been
recently captured and became a highly paid informer for the Salvadoran armed
forces. Information from Andrade later led to the capture, torture or
disappearance of some 200 guerrillas. In 1996 he was arrested in the US for
failure to renew his visa. In 1997 the Clinton administration sought to
deport him.

1990 Oct 24

The
existence of Gladio, a “stay-behind” espionage operation, was acknowledged
by Giulio Andreotti, head of the Italian government. It was sponsored by the
CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II in Italy, as
well as in other European countries.

1990 Nov 3

The
Kryptos sculpture, created by sculptor Jim Sanborn, was dedicated in the
courtyard of the CIA headquarters in Virginia.

1990

US CIA
and military strategist were sent to Colombia to enhance the efficiency
effectiveness of the local military intelligence.

1990

American
innkeeper Michael Devine was murdered in Guatemala. Allegations have been
made that Guatemalan colonel, Julio Roberto Alpirez on CIA payroll, was
involved. A review in 1996 showed that Alpirez was on the CIA payroll from
1988-1992 and that he was involved in the cover-up of the murder of Devine
and had participated in the interrogation and likely torture of Efraim
Bamaca, a captured Guatemalan guerrilla married to an American lawyer.

1991 Jan 18

The US
acknowledged that the CIA and US Army paid Panama’s military leader Manuel
Noriega $322,226 from 1955-1986. Noriega began receiving money from the CIA
in 1976.

1991 Mar 1
1991 Mar 7

US
military specialists surveyed and then detonated a bunker at Kamisiyah,
Iraq. The site had been declared a chemical weapons storage area by Iraq
after the Gulf War. No trace of chemical agents were found before or after
but US & UN inspections teams had earlier found nerve agent rockets and
mustard gas shells in open pits at the site. It was later acknowledged by
the Pentagon that more than 15,000 US troops may have been exposed to nerve
gas due to the detonations. Defense Department logs of this period were
later reported lost. In April 1997 the CIA acknowledged errors that led to
the demolition.

1991 May 8

CIA
Director William H. Webster announced his retirement; he was eventually
succeeded by Robert Gates.

Former
CIA officer Alan D. Fiers pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges in the
Iran-Contra affair.

1991 Sep 16

Confirmation hearings began on the nomination of Robert Gates to head the
CIA.

1991 Nov 5

The
Senate confirmed Robert M. Gates as CIA director.

1991 Nov 12

Robert
Gates was sworn in as CIA director.

1991

US
Customs intercepted a large cocaine shipment and began investigations. It
was found to be part of a CIA operation out of Venezuela.

1991

The
president of Rochester Inst. of Technology (RIT) resigned following a
scandal over CIA influence on research and curriculum, and his own work for
the agency.

1991
1994

Emmanuel
"Toto" Constant headed the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti.
He was also a paid US CIA agent and members of FRAPH were believed
responsible for many of the 3,000 political killings over this period.
Louis-Jodel Chamblain co-founded FRAPH.

1992 Mar 12

Efraim
Banaca Velasquez, a guerilla leader in Guatemala married to an American
lawyer (Jennifer Harbury), disappeared and was later murdered. Secret US
government files later disclosed that the Guatemalan colonel, Julio Roberto
Alpirez, oversaw the interrogation and debriefing and that he was on CIA
payroll. A suit filed by Harbury in 1995 against a list of US officials was
dismissed in 1999 and reinstated in 2000 on appeal.

1992 Aug 26

A
federal judge declared a mistrial in the Iran-Contra cover-up trial of
former CIA spy chief Clair George. George was convicted of perjury in a
retrial, but was then pardoned by President H.W. Bush.

1992 Sep 12

In Peru
the Shining Path guerilla leader Abimael Guzman was captured by police chief
Ketin Vidal with help from a CIA operative nick-named “Superman.” Oscar
Ramirez, aka Feliciano, took over the leadership. Guzman, a former
philosophy professor, was tried by a military court and sentenced to life in
jail. The verdict was overturned in Jan 2003.

1992 Dec 9

Former
CIA spy chief Clair George was convicted of lying to Congress about the
Iran-Contra affair. President Bush pardoned him.

1992

The US
set up the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in Irbil, northern Iraq, as an
alternative to the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was founded with CIA support
in Vienna as a umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition. In 1999 it was led
by Ahmed Chalabi.

1992

The US
began placing CIA spies among UN weapons inspectors only a year after the
end of the Gulf War.

1992
1994

Emmanuel
Constant was a paid agent of the US CIA in Haiti.

1993 Jan 25

Five
commuters were shot outside the gates of the US CIA headquarters in Langley,
Va. Two people died. Mir [Amil] Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani national, was
tracked down for the shooting in 1997 in Afghanistan and returned to the US.
He was convicted of murder in 1997 and was executed Nov 14, 2002.

1993 Aug 8

Freddie
Woodruff (b.1947), CIA agent chief in Tbilisi, Georgia, was shot and killed
during an outing with friends. Georgian authorities charged Anzor Sharmaidze
(20), a volunteer soldier, with the murder. Sharmaidze confessed under
torture and later said he was framed for the murder. In 2008 Sharmaidze was
granted parole from prison.

1993 Oct 28

A US CIA
report mentioned FRAPH and Emmanuel Constant in connection with the killing
of Justice Minister Guy Mallory. The report says the Haitian junta’s chief
of staff, Gen. Philippe Biamby and his associates coordinated the murder.

1993
1995

R. James
Woolsey served as head of the US CIA.

1994 Feb 22

The
Justice Department charged 31-year CIA counterintelligence veteran Aldrich
H. Ames and his wife, Rosario, with selling national security secrets to the
Soviet Union. He passed information from 1985 to 1994 that included the
names of US agents. Ames was later sentenced to life in prison; his wife
received a 5-year term. Ames’ disclosures led to the execution of at least
10 FBI-recruited Soviet and Warsaw Pact agents.

1994 Apr 28

Former
CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union
and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and was
sentenced to life in prison without parole. His wife Rosario also pleaded
guilty.

1994 Jun

Harold
James Nicholson, former CIA station chief, started passing information to
Russia from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and collected as much as $180,000. He
was arrested on Nov 18, 1996 for espionage. He pleaded guilty and drew a 23
1/2 year sentence in 1997.

1994 Sep 28

CIA
Director R. James Woolsey announced reprimands of 11 senior officers in the
wake of the Aldrich Ames spy scandal.

1994 Oct 21

The wife
of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, Rosario Ames, was sentenced to five years in
prison for her role in her husband's espionage.

1994 Nov 1

The US
Senate Intelligence Committee released a report saying CIA Director R. James
Woolsey's response to the Aldrich Ames spy case was "seriously inadequate,"
but that his predecessors were ultimately to blame for the scandal.

Sen.
Robert Torricelli of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee accused the
CIA of a cover-up in 2 Guatemalan murders. A review in 1996 showed that
Alpirez was on the CIA payroll from 1988-1992 and that he was involved in
the cover-up of the 1990 murder of Michael Devine and had participated in
the 1992 interrogation and likely torture of Efraim Bamaca, a captured
Guatemalan guerrilla, killed in captivity and married to an American lawyer.

1996 Apr 27

William
Egan Colby (76), CIA Director, disappeared while canoeing near his
waterfront home in southern Maryland. His body was found 8 days later. In
2003 John Prados authored "Lost Crusador," a biography of Colby.

1996 May 5

The body
of former CIA director William E. Colby was found on a riverbank near his
southern Maryland vacation home, eight days after he'd disappeared.

1996 Jun

In Iraq
there was a coup attempt against Pres. Saddam Hussein. This coincided with
the placement of 9 covert CIA operators on a weapons inspection team seeking
to examine compounds maintained by the Republican Guards.

1996 Nov 18

Harold
James Nicholson, former CIA station chief, was arrested for espionage. He
was said to have started passing information to Russia from Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, in June of 1994 and collected [more than $120,000] as much as
$180,000. Nicholson later pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to
23 1/2 years in prison. He was spared a life sentence for cooperating with
investigators.

1996 Dec 5

President Clinton announced the foreign policy team for his second term,
including Madeleine Albright as the first female secretary of state, Sen.
William Cohen of Maine, a Republican, as defense secretary and Anthony Lake
as CIA director.

1996 Dec

CIA
Director John Deutch stepped down as the top spy and was succeeded by George
Tenet. An investigation soon began over classified materials on Deutch's
personal computer.

1996

The CIA
obtained an al-Qaida training manual that suggested a 10-position leadership
structure for members held in prison. In 2006 a report was made public that
said prisoners at Guantanamo followed this structure.

1996

Robert
Gates (b.1943), former director of the CIA (1991-1993), authored his
autobiography “From the Shadows.”

Anthony
Lake asked President Clinton to withdraw his nomination to be CIA director,
saying the partisan confirmation process had "gone haywire."

1997 Mar 19

Following the withdrawal of Anthony Lake, President Clinton nominated acting
CIA Director George Tenet to head the nation's spy agency. President Clinton
departed Washington for a summit in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian
President Boris Yeltsin.

1997 Mar 23

In
Belarus American diplomat Serge Alexandrov, first secretary at the US
embassy in Minsk, was ordered to leave the country for participating in an
anti-government march. The Foreign Ministry accused him of being a CIA
agent.

1997 Apr 9

The CIA
announced that its own errors may have led to demolition of an Iraqi
ammunition bunker filled with chemical weapons at Kamisiyah in 1991. The CIA
apologized to Gulf War veterans for failing to do a better job in supplying
information to U.S. troops who blew up an Iraqi bunker later found to
contain chemical weapons.

1997 Jun 5

Harold
J. Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer ever caught spying against his
own country, was sentenced to 23 1/2 years in prison for selling defense
secrets to Russia after the Cold War. Officials later claimed that he and
his son continued to make contact with Russian operatives. In 2009 Nicholson
and his son were arraigned on charges of money laundering and acting as
agents of a foreign government.

1997 Jun 17

Mir
Aimal Kasi, suspected in the shooting deaths of two CIA employees outside
agency headquarters in January 1993, was brought to Fairfax, Va., to face
trial after being arrested in Pakistan. He was later convicted and sentenced
to death.

1997 Aug 27

A secret
CIA report acknowledged that the CIA knew of human rights abuses by the
Honduran military in the 1980s. It was declassified in 1998.

1997 Sep

In
Poland Col. Ryszard Kuklinski was cleared of spy charges after a military
court ruled that he acted in Poland’s best interests. He had served as a US
CIA spy and reported on activities from 1972-1981.

1997 Oct 15

The US
CIA disclosed that its annual budget for spy services totaled $26.6 billion.

1997 Nov 10

A jury
in Fairfax, Va., convicted Mir Aimal Kasi of one count of capital murder,
one count of first-degree murder and eight additional charges stemming from
a shooting attack outside CIA headquarters in January 1993.

1997 Nov 12

Four
U.S. businessmen and a Pakistani were killed by gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan,
apparently in retaliation for the murder conviction of Mir Aimal Kasi in the
shooting deaths of two CIA employees.

1997 Nov 14

A jury
in Fairfax, Va., decided that Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kasi should get
the death penalty for gunning down two CIA employees outside agency
headquarters. Kasi was sentenced to death in January 1998. He was executed
Nov 14, 2002.

1998 Jan 23

A judge
in Fairfax, Va., sentenced Mir Aimal Kasi to death for an assault rifle
attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two men and wounded
three other people. Kasi was executed November 2002.

1998 Mar 20

George
Tenet, director of the CIA, disclosed that $26.7 billion was the 1998 budget
secret intelligence activities, one-tenth the overall US military budget.

1998 Apr 3

Douglas
Fred Groat, a disgruntled spy fired by the CIA, was charged with espionage
and extortion. Groat later pleaded guilty to extortion, and was sentenced to
five years in prison.

1998 May

Samuel
Cummings, a former CIA employee and int’l arms seller, died in Monaco.
Cummings became a billionaire selling guns to guerrillas and dictators
worldwide.

1998 Jun 25

Albanian
security personnel (SHIK) under CIA guidance arrested Shawki Salama Attiya,
a Tirana cell forger. Over the next month they made a successful raids on
more suspected members of the Egyptian Jihad terrorist organization. The
suspected terrorists were turned over to anti-terrorist officials in Egypt,
where they delivered forced confessions following torture.

1998 Aug 4

The
Egyptian Jihad under Dr. Zawahri denounced the CIA-led arrests in Albania
and said Americans should soon receive a response "in the only language that
they understand."

1998 Sep 25

Douglas
Groat, a former CIA covert operator, was sentenced to 5 years in prison
after admitting that he attempted to extort $1 million from the agency with
threats to disclose how the US intercepts foreign communications.

1998 Oct 21

Pres.
Clinton signed a $520 billion spending bill that provided $17.9 billion for
the IMF and $1.1 billion as a down payment for new teachers. It was shipped
to him just before the 105th Congress recessed. The CIA received a
supplemental $1.8 billion.

1998

The CIA
began to send teams of American officers to northern Afghanistan to convince
Ahmed Shah Masood to capture and perhaps kill Osama bin Laden.

1998

Jordan
received ok from the American CIA to sell 50,000 surplus AK-47 assault
rifles to Peru. Many of the rifles went to leftist guerrillas in Colombia
and Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru’s spy chief, was implicated.

1998

The
Dalai Lama acknowledged receiving $1.7 million a year in the 1960s from the
US CIA, but denied having personally benefited.

1999 Aug 20

In a
highly unusual move, the CIA pulled the security clearances for former
Director John Deutch for keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer.

1999 Oct 12

In
Pakistan Gen'l. Pervez Musharraf led a military coup after PM Shariff tried
to fire him and replace him with Gen'l. Zia Uddin. Musharraf avoided martial
law and left the parliament intact. Sharif refused to let a passenger plane
land in Karachi with 198 people aboard that included Gen. Musharraf. The
coup cut short a Pakistani commando operation set up by the CIA to get Osama
bin Laden in Afghanistan. In 2009 the Pakistani Supreme Court acquitted
Sharif of hijacking charges.

1999 Oct 26

The US
CIA agreed to give Germany copies of some 32,000 files that belonged to the
Stasi, the former East German intelligence service. The CIA acquired the
files in 1989.

1999 Oct

Igor
Sutyagin, a Russian scholar, was arrested on charges that he sold
information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British
company, that Russian investigators said was a CIA cover. Sutyagin was found
guilty of espionage in 2004.

In
Malaysia terrorists held a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. The US CIA informed the
FBI that Khalid Al-Midhar had a US visa. Midhar was later one of the Sep 11,
2001, terrorists.

2000 Feb

In Egypt
Ahmed Osman Saleh and Ahmed Ibrahim al-Naggar, members of the Egyptian
Jihad, were hanged for their connections to terrorist cases. They had been
pulled out of Albania in 1998 by Albanian Security (SHIK) working with the
CIA.

2000 Apr 2

It was
reported that a Nov. 1999, 79-page CIA report: "International Trafficking in
Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery,"
claimed 50,000 victims per year in the US.

2000 Apr 8

The
Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken
following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the NATO war
against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.

2001 Jan 5

In 2007
it was reported that a French intelligence document dated to this day warned
that al-Qaida was at work on a hijacking plot. The information was passed on
to the CIA. Documents on Osama bin Laden's terror network were drawn up by
the French spy service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001.

2001 Feb 18

Robert
Philip Hanssen (56), senior FBI agent, was arrested for spying. He had
allegedly passed information to the Russians for 15 years. It was believed
that he had betrayed the construction of a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy
in Washington. He pleaded guilty July 3 to avoid execution. His disclosures
were later reported to have played a role in the execution or jailing of at
least 3 Russians and threatened the identity of another 50 people. In 2002
David A. Wise authored: "The Bureau and the Mole." Hanssen was sentenced to
life in prison on May 10, 2002.

2001 Mar 23

It was
reported that the Bush administration had removed the CIA as a broker
between Israeli and Palestinian security services.

2001 Apr 28

It was
reported that the CIA had released some 10,000 pages of documents on 20
Nazis that included Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele, Barbie, Mueller, Waldheim and
Hoettl.

2001 May

Canadian
journalist Kathy Gannon came across a book in Afghanistan titled
“Encyclopedia of Jihad” and passed it on to the CIA.

2001 Jun 5

Pres.
Bush sent George Tenet, the CIA director, to help Middle East security
talks.

2001 Jun 12

Israel
and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire following 6 days of mediation by
US CIA director George Tenet.

2001 Jul 10

George
Tenet, director of the CIA, allegedly met with Condoleeza Rice and warned
her of an imminent al-Qaida attack. News of the meeting was only made public
in 2006.

2001 Aug 17

US CIA
Director George Tenet briefed Pres. Bush in Texas on day-to-day threats
facing the US.

2001 Aug 21

The CIA
placed Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi under suspicion as part of the
investigation in the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen. The 2 were
among the hijackers who commandeered the jet that hit the Pentagon on Sep
11.

2001 Aug 31

US CIA
Director George Tenet briefed Pres. Bush at the White House on day-to-day
threats facing the US. Tenet did not mention the Aug. 16 arrest of Zacarias
Moussaoui, an Islamic fundamentalist for overstaying a visa after training
on a Boeing 747 flight simulator.

2001 Nov 25

Taliban
troops near Mazar-e-Sharif staged a prison revolt and hundreds were reported
killed. US marines landed near Kandahar marking the 1st major use of US
ground troops in Afghanistan. 5 Americans were injured by an American bomb
and 1 CIA agent, Johnny Michael Spann (32), was reportedly killed.

2001 Nov 28

Officials recovered the body of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann from a
prison compound in Mazar-e-Sharif after northern alliance rebels backed by
U.S. airstrikes and special forces quelled an uprising by Taliban and al-Qaida
prisoners.

2001
2002

The US
Navy Engineering Logistics Office issued at least 10 classified contracts to
US aviation companies to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice
torture. The CIA also played a role in the operations.

2001

The US
National Archives signed a secret agreement with the CIA permitting the spy
agency to withdraw from public access records it considered to have been
improperly declassified. A similar agreement was signed with the Air Force
in 2002. This news was only made public in 2006.

2002 Jan 10

A CIA
report said China, North Korea and Iran will probably have long-range
missile capable of reaching the US by 2015.

2002 Feb

Joseph
C. Wilson IV, former US diplomat and veteran of the diplomatic wars of Iraq
and Africa, was sent on a secret mission to Niger to determine if Iraqis had
tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa to build nuclear weapons.
Wilson spent a week in Niger chatting with locals about the allegation,
coming to the conclusion that the yellowcake charges were probably
unfounded. His wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. In 2006 it was
reported that Plame was part of an operation tracking the proliferation of
nuclear weapons material into Iran.

2002 Mar 28

A US
diplomat, reportedly the CIA station chief, was pulled from Belgrade
following accusations that he was receiving military secrets.

2002 Mar

In Cuba
Anthony Boadle began working as Reuters' bureau chief and continued through
2008. He published reports favoring local counterrevolutionaries and the
interests of the United States and the European Union. In 2011 Cuban
state-television accused Boadle of working as a CIA operative.

2002 Apr 10

In
Russia the FSB, successor to the KGB, accused the CIA of trying to steal
military secrets. US diplomat Yunju Kensinger and David Patterson were
identified as agents posing as US Embassy officials.

2002 May 6

In
Afghanistan the CIA fired a missile from a Predator in an attempt to kill
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of Hezb-e-Islami, and his top aides outside Kabul.

2002 May 6

Daan
Goosen, South Africa scientist, passed a vial of genetically engineered
bacteria to a retired US CIA officer and offered an entire collection of
pathogens developed in SA bio-weapons research for $5 million and
immigrations permits for 19 associates and family members. The deal
collapsed.

2002 Jun 3

US CIA
director George Tenet met with Israeli leaders as Israel stepped up seizures
of Arab land for use as security buffer zones.

2002 Jun 4

Pres.
Bush said the CIA and FBI had failed to communicate adequately before the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; Congress began extraordinary closed-door
hearings into intelligence lapses.

2002 Jun 16

The Bush
administration revealed a secret plan to for the CIA to undermine and
possibly kill Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein. [see Apr 4]

2002 Jun 17

A
converted C-130 air tanker crashed over a flaming ridge near Walker in Mono
County, Ca., and 3 crew members were killed. It was later reported that the
1956 plane had been used by the CIA and lacked maintenance records.

2002 Sep 26

US
immigration officials seized Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, after his
name popped up on a watch list at JFK. US officials refused to allow legal
council or a phone call. The CIA questioned him and then handed him over to
Syrian intelligence where he was held and tortured for 10 months before
being released. The case came to be called an instance of "torture by
proxy." In 2006 a Canadian government report said the US "very likely" sent
the software engineer to Syria, where he was tortured, based on the false
accusation by Canadian authorities that he was suspected of links to al-Qaida.

2002 Oct 22

Richards
Helms (89), CIA director who was fired by Richard Nixon, died. In 2003 his
autobiography "A Look Over My Shoulder," co-written with William Hood, was
published.

2002 Oct 29

Gul
Rahman, suspected of links to al-Qaida, was picked up from a home in
Islamabad and taken with four other people to a CIA black site called the
Salt Pit near the Kabul Airport. He was stripped naked, doused in cold water
and then left to die in the CIA-run prison. Rahman died Nov. 20, 2002, but
his identity was not known until revealed by an Associated Press
investigation in March 2010.

2002 Nov 14

Pakistani Aimal Khan Kasi (Kansi) was put to death by injection at a prison
in Jarratt, Va., for the slayings of two CIA employees in 1993. [see Nov 14,
1997}

2003 Feb 17

American
CIA operatives snatched Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu Omar)
from his house in Milan and took him to Egypt, where he was jailed, tortured
and released. In 2005 an Italian judge ordered the arrest of 13 American
suspects on charges of kidnapping. In 2009 Nasr asked for euro10 million
(nearly $15 million) in damages from the American and Italian defendants
charged in his abduction.

2003 Mar 1

In
Pakistan a joint raid outside Islamabad by CIA and Pakistani agents led to
the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khaled Sheikh Mohammed), the suspected
mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, along with 2 others.
Documents and computer files later revealed that the al Qaeda biochemical
weapons program was well advanced.

2003 Mar

Majid
Khan, a 1999 graduate of a Baltimore-area high school, was seized in
Pakistan and held until 2006 in secret CIA custody. In September 2006, US
authorities transferred him and other high-value detainees to Guantanamo,
where they may be charged and face prosecution under a new military tribunal
system.

2003 Apr 10

In Najaf
clerics Haider al-Kadar, a widely hated loyalist of Saddam, and Abdul Majid
al-Khoei, a high-ranking Shiite cleric and son of one of the religion's most
prominent spiritual leaders, were hacked to death at the shrine of Imam Ali
by a crowd during a meeting of reconciliation. Majid al-Khoei had been give
as much as $13 million by the CIA to cultivate supporters.

2003 Jun 12

Lewis
“Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to VP Dick Cheney, 1st learned of CIA
officer Valery Plame in a conversation with VP Cheney. In 2005 Libby told a
Grand Jury that he was authorized to disclose information about the National
Intelligence Estimate to the press by his superiors.

In
Afghanistan Abdul Wali (28), a detainee held at a US base, died following 2
days of interrogation. In 2004 David A. Passaro, former Army Ranger, was
charged with assault in connection to Wali’s death. In 2006 Passaro, a
former CIA contractor, was convicted in North Carolina of assaulting Abdul
Wali with a metal flashlight. In 2007 Passaro was sentenced to 8 ½ years in
prison.

2003 Jun 23

Judith
Miller, reporter for the NY Times, met with Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of
staff for VP Dick Cheney, who gave her information about CIA operative
Valery Plame. Reporter Bob Woodward also spoke with Libby on this day and on
June 27 and in 2005 testified that Libby made no mention of Plame. Woodward
did say another senior government official told him about Plame and her role
in the CIA in mid-June.

2003 Jul 6

Joseph
Wilson, former American ambassador, criticized the Bush administration for
the way it used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. He alleged that
Pres. Bush had falsely accused Iraq of trying to buy uranium from Niger. Two
White House officials soon called at least 6 Washington journalists and told
them that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent who had
worked in Niger. A State Dept. memo was soon sent to Colin Powell on how
Wilson got sent to Niger and the role of his wife.

2003 Jul 7

Pres.
Bush departed for a 5-country African tour. In 2007 Ari Fleischer, former
White House press secretary, said he had lunch with Scooter Libby on this
day and was told by Libby that Ambassador Wilson had been sent to Africa by
his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA. Wilson had criticized the
Bush administration the previous day for the way it used intelligence to
justify the war in Iraq.

2003 Jul 9

Karl
Rove, senior advisor to Pres. Bush, spoke with syndicated columnist Robert
Novak about diplomat Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. About this
same time Rove also spoke with Matthew Cooper, Time’s White House
correspondent, and mentioned Wilson and Plame. In 2006 Novak acknowledged
that 3 administration sources, including Rove and CIA spokesman Bill Harlow,
had provided him information.

2003 Jul 11

CIA
Director George Tenet took blame for Pres. Bush's State of the Union
discredited claim that uranium from Africa had been shipped to Iraq.

2003 Jul 12

Former
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA
operative (Valerie Plame) to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a
phone call. Pincus testified to this in 2007 as the first defense witness in
the CIA leak trial.

2003 Jul 14

Columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. Joseph
Wilson, former American ambassador, had earlier alleged (July 6) that Pres.
Bush had falsely accused Iraq of trying to buy uranium from Niger. Two White
House officials soon called at least 6 Washington journalists and told them
that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a undercover CIA agent who had worked
in Niger. In 2006 Richard Armitage, former Deputy Sec. of State, said he had
confessed to the FBI on Oct 1, 2003, that he told Robert Novak about Valerie
Plame during a July 8, 2003, meeting.

2003 Sep 29

US The
Justice Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who
leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of ex-Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, and President Bush the next day directed his White House
staff to cooperate fully. The White House denied that President Bush's top
political adviser, Karl Rove, had leaked a CIA agent's identity to retaliate
against an opponent of the administration's Iraq policy. [see Jul 14, 2003,
Jun 30, 2005]

2003 Sep 30

The FBI
began a full-scale criminal investigation into whether White House officials
had illegally leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.

2003 Oct 25

In
Afghanistan CIA operatives William Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., and
Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, of San Diego were ambushed and killed near
the village in Shkin in Paktika province while "tracking terrorists."

2003 Oct

Donald
Rumsfeld approved a CIA request to hold a suspected Iraqi terrorist in
secret and shield his detention from the Red Cross.

2003 Dec 31

Security
forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named Khaled
el-Masri (b.1963). For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a
select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for
interrogation in Afghanistan. He was the wrong guy. El-Masri was dumped in
Albania in a remote hillside on May 28, 2004, without explanation or
apology. Five months later Germany withdrew warrants for the arrest of 13
CIA agents.

2003 Dec

Dennis
Montgomery, a California computer programmer, reported that hidden in the
crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about
specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were
hijacking targets. CIA officials rushed the information to Pres. Bush, who
ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could
enter American airspace. Montgomery had patented computer codes that he
claimed could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of Al Jazeera. His
codes were later believed to be fake. In 2011 Montgomery faced charges of
trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at Las Vegas casinos.

2003

A CIA
report said that the Al-Rajhi Bank in Saudi Arabia had served as a conduit
for terrorist transactions since at least the mid-1990s.

2004 Jan 28

David
Kay, former head of the CIA's weapons search team in Iraq, told Congress no
weapons of mass destruction had been found and that prewar intelligence was
"almost all wrong." In 2007 Bob Drogin authored “Curveball: Spies, Lies, and
the Con Man Who Caused a War.” Curveball was the code name for an Iraqi
chemical engineer who turned up in Germany in 1999 and served as the source
for Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs. In 2011 Rafid Ahmed
Alwan al-Janabi, identified as the informer called "Curveball," said he is
proud that he lied about his country developing mobile biological warfare
labs.

2004 Feb 5

CIA
Director George Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have
over-estimated Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities.

2004 Jun 3

Pres.
Bush said CIA Director George Tenet, has resigned for personal reasons.
Tenet announced his resignation amid a controversy over intelligence lapses
about suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.

2004 Jun 24

Federal
investigators questioned President Bush for more than an hour in connection
with the news leak of a CIA operative's name.

2004 Aug 10

Pres.
Bush nominated Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican congressman, to head the
CIA. Goss spent most of his career as a clandestine operative in Latin
America.

2004 Aug 11

An
Islamic Web site carried a videotape that appeared to show militants in Iraq
beheading a man identified as a CIA agent. The authenticity of the videotape
could not be verified immediately.

2004 Aug 27

President Bush signed executive orders designed to strengthen the CIA
director's power over the nation's intelligence agencies and create a
national counterterrorism center.

2004 Nov 12

John
McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA, resigned after a series of
confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and
Patrick Murray, the CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff. The
riff left the agency in turmoil.

2004 Nov 15

Top CIA
officials, Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick announced their resignations
after reported disputes with new Director Peter J. Goss.

2004

An
anonymous author, a senior CIA analyst, published “Imperial Hubris: Why the
West Is Losing the War on Terror.”

2004

The CIA
hired Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate
top operatives of Al-Qaida. Blackwater of North Carolina, later renamed Xe
Services, helped with planning, training and surveillance until the
unsuccessful program was cancelled.

2005 Mar 3

President Bush visited CIA headquarters, where he promised agency employees
they would retain an “incredibly vital” role in safeguarding the nation’s
security despite the creation of a new post of national director of
intelligence.

2005 Apr 25

The
CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, said his search for
weapons of mass destruction had been "exhausted" without finding any.

2005 Jun 9

Pres
Bush nominated CIA and FBI veteran Henry Crumpton as the State Department's
coordinator for counterterrorism policy. President Bush defended the USA
Patriot Act, saying it had made America safer and should be made permanent.

2005 Jun 24

An
Italian official said a judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for
allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism
efforts. The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam
identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003.

2005 Jun 30

Time
editor Norman Pearlstein agreed to hand over notes relating to the CIA-leak
probe. The next day Lawrence O’Donnell broke the story that the e-mails that
Time turned over to the prosecutor that day reveal that Karl Rove is the
source Matt Cooper is protecting. [see Jul 14, 2003, Sep 29, 2003]

2005 Jul 6

NY Times
reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to name her CIA-leak source
(2003) for a never-written article on CIA officer Valerie Plame. She was
freed after 85 days when Lewis Libby (55), chief of staff for VP Cheney,
released her from a claim of confidentiality. She agreed to testify before a
federal grand jury.

2005 Jul 17

Time
magazine's Matthew Cooper said a 2003 phone call with White House political
adviser Karl Rove was the first he heard about the wife of Bush
administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently working for the CIA.

2005 Jul 20

A Milan
prosecutor sought arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives,
accusing them of helping plan the kidnapping of an Egyptian radical Muslim
cleric.

2005 Jul 25

An
appeals court in Milan, Italy, issued arrest warrants for six more purported
CIA operatives accused of helping plan the 2003 kidnapping of a radical
Egyptian Muslim cleric.

2005 Sep 29

NY Times
reporter Judith Miller was released from 85 days of federal detention after
agreeing to testify in a criminal probe into the leak of a covert CIA
officer's identity.

2005 Sep 30

Out of
jail after 85 days, New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before a
grand jury investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

2005 Oct 13

US
intelligence officials announced the establishment of a National Clandestine
Service to run CIA operations and coordinate activities with the Pentagon
and FBI.

2005 Oct 28

US
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald released a 22-page indictment with five
charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. regarding the Valerie Plame
case. They carried a total maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and $1.25
million in fines. It portrayed Libby as a serial liar who recklessly
mishandled national security screts. Libby immediately resigned as top aide
to VP Cheney.

2005 Nov 2

The
Washington Post reported that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating al
Qaeda captives at a secret facility in Eastern Europe as part of a covert
global prison system that has included sites in 8 countries and was set up
after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

2005 Nov 3

European
Union officials said they would investigate a report that the CIA set up
secret jails in Eastern Europe to interrogate top al-Qaida suspects. The
international Red Cross also said it asked the US to let a representative
visit detainees if such a facility exists. At least 10 nations denied that
the prisons were in their territory. Human Rights Watch in New York said it
has evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in
Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.

2005 Nov 3

Vice
President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, pleaded not
guilty to a five-count felony indictment in the CIA leak case.

2005 Nov 11

A new
poll said most Americans say they aren't impressed by the ethics and honesty
of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its justifications
for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the leak of a covert CIA
officer's identity.

2005 Nov 11

An
Italian prosecutor said that the Milan prosecutor's office has asked for the
extradition of 22 purported CIA operatives in the kidnapping of an Egyptian
cleric in 2003.

2005 Nov 14

Spanish
court officials said the National Court has received a prosecutor's report
on allegations that the CIA used an airport on the Spanish island of
Mallorca for a program of covert transfers of terror suspects. The 114-page
report was submitted in July.

2005 Nov 28

EU
Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini warned that that any
of the 25 bloc nations found to have operated secret CIA prisons could have
their EU voting rights suspended.

2005 Dec 6

A German
man filed a lawsuit in Virginia claiming he was held captive and tortured by
US government agents after being mistakenly identified as an associate of
the Sept. 11 hijackers. Khaled El-Masri said he was arrested Dec 31, 2003
while attempting to enter Macedonia for a holiday trip and flown to
Afghanistan. During five months in captivity he was subjected to "torture
and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

2005 Dec 9

Marc
Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch investigator, said Poland served as the CIA's
main center to detain terrorist suspects in Europe at clandestine prisons.

2005 Dec 10

Poland's
PM Marcinkiewicz said that he has ordered a probe of allegations that the
CIA ran secret prisons for terror suspects on Polish territory.

2005 Dec 23

An
Italian judge issued EU arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in
connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan
street in 2003. the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any
of the 25 EU member countries.

2005

Admiral
Stansfield Turner, former CIA chief (1977-1980) authored “Burn Before
Reading,” an examination of how American presidents have interacted with
their intelligence chiefs.

2005

The US
CIA destroyed at least 2 videotapes documenting the interrogation of 2 al-Qaida
operatives, including Abu Zubaydah, dating back to 2002. CIA lawyers had
told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005 that the CIA did not possess
recordings of interrogations. The tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose
Rodriquez Jr., head of the CIA’s clandestine service. In 2010 it was made
public that Porter J. Goss, director of the CIA at the time, approved the
Rodriguez decision shortly after the tapes were destroyed.

2006 Jan 14

Pakistan
condemned a purported CIA airstrike on a border village, and said it was
protesting to the U.S. Embassy over the attack that killed at least 18
people.

2006 Apr 20

The CIA
fired Mary McCarthy, a top intelligence analyst, who admitted leaking
classified information about a network of secret CIA prisons. She had
provided information that contributed to a Washington Post story last year
disclosing secret US prisons in Eastern Europe.

2006 Apr 26

EU
Parliament investigators said the CIA has conducted more than 1,000
undeclared flights over European territory since 2001, a clear violation of
an international treaty.

2006 May 5

Porter
Goss (67), US CIA director, resigned under pressure after 18 months on the
job.

2006 May 5

Valerie
Plame, former CIA agent, agreed to sell her memoir for $2.5 million. The
book, whose working title is "Fair Game," is scheduled to be published in
the fall of 2007 by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random House.

2006 May 5

CIA
Director Porter Goss resigned in a second-term shake-up of President Bush's
team.

2006 May 8

The
White House said it will nominate General Michael Hayden to run the CIA and
defended the move to name a top military officer to run the civilian
intelligence agency.

2006 May 26

Air
Force General Michael Hayden won confirmation to be the 20th CIA director in
a 78-15 Senate vote.

2006 May 30

US Air
Force Gen. Michael Hayden was sworn in as CIA director.

2006 Jun 7

Swiss
senator Dick Marty, the head of an investigation into alleged CIA
clandestine prisons, said 14 European nations colluded with US intelligence
in a "spider's web" of secret flights and detention centers that violated
international human rights law. Marty asserted that at least 7 European
governments were complicit in the transports.

2006 Jun 13

In
Washington DC Karl Rove’s lawyer said special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
would not bring charges against Rove in a 3-year-old CIA leak case.

2006 Jun 26

President Bush said it was "disgraceful" that newspapers had disclosed a
secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search
of terrorist suspects.

2006 Jul 5

Italian
prosecutors said they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and
were seeking four more Americans as part of an investigation into the
alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.

2006 Jul 13

Former
CIA officer Valerie Plame sued Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential
adviser Karl Rove and other White House officials, saying they orchestrated
a "whispering campaign" to destroy her career.

2006 Sep 6

Pres.
Bush acknowledged that the CIA had subjected dozens of detainees to “tough”
interrogation at secret prisons abroad and that 14 remaining detainees have
been transferred to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

2006 Sep 7

Former
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confirmed he was the source of a
leak that had disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, saying
he didn't realize Plame's job was covert.

2006 Sep 12

Joan
Valerie Bondurant, former spy and UC prof. of political science, died in
Tucson, Az. She had translated documents for the CIA in India where she met
Gandhi and grew fascinated by satyagraha, a thesis of nonviolent resistance.
Her books included “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of
Conflict” (1958).

2006 Oct 9

Khaled
al-Masri (43), a Kuwaiti-born German citizen, testified in a Spanish court
that he was kidnapped on Dec 31, 2003, at the Serbia-Macedonia border while
on vacation, tortured by US intelligence agents for 23 days, then flown by
the CIA to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned and abused for five months.
He was released in Albania in May 2004 after the CIA discovered they had the
wrong person.

2006 Oct 27

Swiss
officials said authorities have found enough evidence to seek a full
investigation into allegations the CIA was trying to obtain personal details
of about 500 labor union members, most of them Arabs.

2007 Jan 19

British
foreign secretary Margaret Beckett admitted that her government was aware of
a secret CIA prison network before Pres. Bush acknowledged its existence in
September.

2007 Jan 23

A
special committee of the European Parliament approved a report alleging EU
nations including Britain, Poland, Germany and Italy were aware of secret
CIA flights over Europe and the abduction of terror suspects by US agents
into clandestine detention centers.

2007 Feb 11

In Egypt
Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was released. The Egyptian
Muslim preacher had been allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents off the streets
of Milan, Italy, on Feb 17, 2003, and taken to Egypt. It was reported that
since the end of December seven women have been stabbed by a dark-skinned
man in his 20s in Cairo’s Maadi suburb, whose richer areas are home to
numerous embassies and many foreigners.

2007 Feb 13

Brent
Wilkes, a former CIA official, was indicted on corruption charges related to
ex-Congressman Randy Cunningham and defense contractors.

2007 Feb 13

David
Passaro, a former CIA contract employee, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in
prison for beating Afghan detainee Abdul Wali in July, 2003. Wali died 48
hours after interrogation.

2007 Feb 14

The
European Parliament approved a controversial report accusing Britain,
Germany, Italy and other European nations of turning a blind eye to CIA
flights transporting terrorism suspects to secret prisons in an apparent
breach of EU human rights standards.

2007 Feb 16

An
Italian judge indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an
Egyptian terror suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first
criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The
proceedings were later suspended pending a ruling on the Italian
government's request to throw out the indictments.

Former
US White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of lying and
obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Sentencing was scheduled for June.

2007 Mar 16

Former
CIA operative Valerie Plame told a House committee that White House and
State Department officials had "carelessly and recklessly" blown her cover
in a politically motivated smear of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson, for publicly disputing President Bush's assertion that Saddam
Hussein was on the brink of acquiring a nuclear bomb.

2007 Apr 3

An AP
investigation said CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the
Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries
held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and
abuse.

2007 Apr 5

The US
pressed Ethiopia for details on detainees from 19 nations taken to secret
prisons there and interrogated by CIA and FBI agents.

2007 Apr 27

The
Pentagon said it had taken custody of Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior al-Qaeda
commander. Officials said al-Iraqi was handed over to the CIA in late 2006.

2007 Apr 28

In
northwest Pakistan a suicide attacker detonated a bomb as Aftab Khan Sherpao,
the interior minister, finished speaking at a public meeting, killing 28
people and wounding the official. Saud Memon (44), a suspect in the death of
WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl, was dumped, badly injured and weighing less than
80 pounds, in front of his Karachi home. He had been secretly detained and
interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence.

2007 May 8

A
federal judge in El Paso, Texas, dismissed immigration fraud charges against
Luis Posada Carriles (79), a former CIA operative accused of masterminding a
1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane along with 1997 bombings in
Havana.

2007 May 24

The head
of the UN nuclear agency said he agreed with CIA estimates that Iran was
three to eight years from being able to make nuclear weapons and he urged
the US and other powers to pursue talks with the Islamic country.

2007 Jun 8

A
European investigator issued a report saying the CIA ran secret prisons in
Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees in the war on
terror.

2007 Jun 8

In Italy
the first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened
in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an
Egyptian terrorist suspect.

2007 Jun 27

A Swiss
investigator said European governments have built a "wall of silence"
surrounding their complicity with a CIA program that included holding
terrorist suspects in secret jails.

2007 Jul 3

President Bush refused to rule out an eventual pardon for I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby after already commuting his prison sentence in the CIA leak case.

2007 Jul 19

A
federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie
Plame, who was demanding money from Bush administration officials she blamed
for leaking her agency identity.

2007 Aug 9

Newly
declassified documents said Canadian intelligence officials suspected that
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen detained by the US in 2002 as a
terror suspect and deported, had been sent to a third country for torture as
part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. Arar was detained in
September 2002 by US authorities during a flight stopover in New York while
returning home to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia.

2007 Sep 29

Iran's
parliament voted to designate the CIA and the US Army as "terrorist
organizations," a largely symbolic response to a US Senate resolution
seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

2007 Oct 3

President Hugo Chavez accused the US of trying to spur a military rebellion,
saying the CIA is behind the distribution of leaflets inside army barracks
calling for his ouster.

2007 Dec 6

CIA
Director Michael Hayden revealed the agency had videotaped its
interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three
years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the
identities of US questioners.

2007 Dec 7

US
Congressional Democrats demanded a full Justice Department investigation
into whether the CIA had obstructed justice by destroying videotapes
documenting the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.

2007 Dec 8

The US
Justice Department and CIA announced a joint inquiry into the spy agency's
destruction of videotapes of interrogations of two suspected terrorists.

2007 Dec 11

The US
Senate Intelligence Committee took closed-door testimony from CIA Director
Michael Hayden on how videotapes of terror suspect interrogations were made,
then destroyed.

2007

George
Tenet, former CIA director, with Bill Harlow authored “At the Center of the
Storm: My Years at the CIA.”

2007

Tim
Weiner authored “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”

2007

Valerie
Wilson (aka Valerie Plame), former CIA agent, authored “Fair Game: My Life
as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.” Her cover was revealed in 2003.

2007

Joseph
Dominick Pistone (b.1939), alias Donnie Brasco, authored “Donnie Brasco:
Un-finished Business.” Pistone, a former FBI agent, worked undercover for
six years (1976-1981) infiltrating the Bonanno family and to a lesser extent
the Colombo Family, branches of the Mafia in NYC.

2008 Jan 7

Philip
Agee (72), a former CIA agent who became an outspoken critic of Washington's
Cuba policy, died in a Havana hospital following ulcer surgery. Agee quit
the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time
when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975
book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA misdeeds against
leftists in the region that included a 22-page list of purported agency
operatives.

2008 Jan 16

CIA
analyst Tom Donahue disclosed that criminals have been able to hack into
computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities outside
the US. He offered few specifics on what actually went wrong.

2008 Jul 30

The NY
Times reported that a top Central Intelligence Agency official has traveled
to Islamabad and confronted senior officials with evidence of ties between
Pakistan's spy agency and militants operating in that country's tribal
areas.

2008 Sep 17

A CIA
missile strike in South Waziristan killed 6 people as US Adm. Mike Mullen
assured Pakistan’s leaders that the US respects Pakistan’s sovereignty.

2008 Sep 29

Kyle
Dustin Foggo (53), former executive director of the CIA, pleaded guilty to
defrauding the government. His guilty plea to a single charge wiped out 27
additional counts. The case was linked to the corruption scandal involving
Randy Cunningham, former Republican congressman from San Diego. In 2009
Foggo was sentenced to 37 months in prison.

2008 Sep

From
Algeria Andrew Warren, a CIA station chief and a convert to Islam, was sent
back to the United States after two women came forward with charges of rape
after lacing their drinks with a drug.

2008

Hugh
Wilford authored “The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America,” an
account of the CIA’s post war front groups.

Ron
Suskind authored “The Way of the World,” in which he claimed that the White
House in 2003 ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from
Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Iraqi intelligence, to Saddam
Hussein.

2008

John
Diamond authored “The CIA and the Culture of Failure: US Intelligence From
the end of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq.”

2009 Jan 5

Pres.
Elect Obama named William Panetta (70) to head the CIA.

2009 Jan 22

President Obama signed an executive order to shutter Guantanamo within one
year, fulfilling his campaign promise to close a facility that critics
around the world say violates the rights of detainees. Obama also banned the
CIA from operating secret prisons.

2009 Feb 18

In
Ecuador US diplomat Mark Sullivan was declared a “persona non grata” and
told to leave. Pres. Correa later said Sullivan had directed CIA operations
in Ecuador.

2009 Mar 2

The
Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets,
revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure
powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of
interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects.

2009 Mar 6

The CIA
destroyed a dozen videotapes of harsh interrogations of terror suspects,
according to documents filed in a lawsuit over the government's treatment of
detainees. The 12 tapes were part of a larger collection of 92 videotapes of
terror suspects that the CIA destroyed. The extent of the tape destruction
was disclosed through a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
against the government.

2009 Mar 11

Italy's
highest court sided with the government and threw out key evidence in an
alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect in Italy, dealing a
blow to the trial of 26 Americans charged in the case.

2009 Apr 16

President Barack Obama announced his decision not to prosecute CIA
operatives who used interrogation practices described by many as torture. He
condemned the aggressive techniques, including waterboarding, shackling and
stripping, used on terror suspects while promising not to legally pursue the
perpetrators.

2009 Jun 23

CIA
director Leon Panetta, learned of a nascent CIA counterterrorism program
within the CIA, terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting
with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the
program and that it was canceled. Former Vice President Dick Cheney had
directed the CIA in 2001 not to inform Congress about the nascent
counterterrorism program, which developed plans to dispatch small teams to
kill senior Al-Qaida terrorists.

2009 Oct 21

Lithuanian lawmakers demanded an investigation into allegations that the CIA
had established a prison there for al-Qaida suspects. Leaders have denied
that Lithuania had hosted clandestine detention centers.

2009 Oct 27

A
Lithuanian lawmaker said there is no evidence that US airplanes with al-Qaida
suspects ever landed in the Baltic country. A recent report by ABC News
claimed the CIA had a secret prison in Vilnius from September 2004 through
November 2005.

2009 Oct 27

The NY
Times reported that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been
getting regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency. The paper
said Ahmed Wali Karzai is a suspected player in Afghanistan's opium trade
and has been paid by the CIA over the past eight years for services that
included helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at
the CIA's direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar. Ahmed Wali
Karzai denied reports that he has received regular payments from the CIA for
much of the past eight years.

2009 Nov 4

An
Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty in the kidnapping
of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions
anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary
renditions program. The Americans and Italian agents were accused of
kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17,
2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany.

2009 Nov 5

Lithuania's parliament voted to investigate allegations that the Baltic
state hosted a secret CIA prison for al Qaeda suspects.

2009 Dec 4

The New
York Times reported that the White House has authorized the CIA to expand
the use of unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan to track down and strike
suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members.

2009 Dec 22

Lithuania said it may have hosted two 'war on terror' lock-ups used by
American agents to interrogate suspected Al-Qaeda members. Arvydas
Anusauskas, the head of an inquiry commission, said the first project was
developed from 2002 and that a 2nd site was created in 2004. The probe found
that five CIA-linked aircraft landed on Lithuanian soil from 2003 to 2006.
Two touched down in Vilnius on February 3, 2003, and October 6, 2005. In the
second case, border guards were barred from checking the plane. Three other
aircraft landed at Palanga, on the Baltic coast, around 330 km from Vilnius,
on January 2 and February 18, 2005, and March 25, 2006.

2009 Dec 30

In
Afghanistan bombings killed 14 people, including 8 Americans and an Afghan
in a suicide attack at a CIA base at the edge of Khost city, and 4 Canadian
soldiers and a journalist by a roadside bomb in the southern Kandahar
province. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi (32), a physician from Jordan,
was an Al-Qaida triple agent. 7 CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence
officer were among the victims. An airstrike by international forces in
Helmand province killed 7 civilians, 2 Taliban and wounded another civilian.
The attack took place after an international patrol came under fire from
insurgents and called for air support. Suspected Taliban militants kidnapped
2 French journalists working for France's public television and 3 Afghan
companions in Kapisa province.

2009 Dec 31

In
northwest Pakistan a suspected US missile strike near Mir Ali hit a house
and killed 3 people. In 2010 Pakistani tribesman Kareem Khan sought 500
million dollars in compensation from the CIA after his son and brother were
killed in the drone attack.

2009

The US
shut down a $24 million off the books intelligence-gathering program to
track down suspected insurgent leaders in Afghanistan. The CIA and some
military officials had complained that Michael Furlong, a senior Defense
Dept. official, had hired contractors to run the program.

2010 Feb 16

Pakistani intelligence officials said the Taliban's top military commander
has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation. Mullah Abdul Ghani
Baradar, the group's No. 2 leader behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah
Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured some
days ago in Karachi.

2010 Jun 23

An
industry source said the CIA has hired Xe Services, formerly known as
Blackwater Worldwide, to guard facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The
contract was said to be worth about $100 million.

2010 Aug 18

CIA
Director Leon Panetta said the CIA is opening a counterproliferation center
to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that comes
as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power plant.

2010 Aug 21

Roland
Haas (58), a Georgia-based former Army Reserve intelligence officer, was
found dead from a gunshot wound that pierced his femoral artery. In 2007
Haas had authored “Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin.”
Several former CIA officials denounced the book as a hoax.

2010 Aug 27

The
Washington Post reported that the CIA is making payments to a significant
number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration. The
Post also cited a former CIA official as saying that the CIA payments to
Afghan officials were necessary because "the head of state is not going to
tell you everything" and because Karzai often seems unaware of moves that
members of his own government make.

2010 Sep 20

Libya's
daily Oea newspaper reported that Douglas O'Reilly, a Canadian man, was
detained after meeting a US diplomat suspected of being a CIA agent. He was
detained on suspicion of spying on a planned BP offshore drilling project.
O'Reilly claimed to be an archaeologist seeking to warn of the BP project's
potential impact on archaeological sites. O'Reilly was given freedom to
leave Libya on Sep 22.

2010 Sep 22

A US
official in Washington confirmed reports that the CIA is running an
all-Afghan paramilitary group in Afghanistan that has been hunting al-Qaida,
Taliban, and other militant targets for the agency. A security professional
in Kabul familiar with the operation said the 3,000-strong force was set up
in 2002 to capture targets for CIA interrogation. Al-Jazeera cameraman
Mohammad Nadir was arrested in Kandahar. In Helmand province a Danish
soldier was killed and another wounded by a homemade bomb.

2010 Sep 22

A Polish
prosecutor said his office has opened an investigation into whether Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri, a Saudi man accused in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was
mistreated in a prison that the CIA allegedly ran in Poland.

2010 Oct 22

In
Virginia Glenn Shriver (28) of Detroit pleaded guilty to trying to get a job
with the Central Intelligence Agency in order to spy for China and to hiding
contacts and money he got from Chinese intelligence agents. Shriver
acknowledged that he met with Chinese officials about 20 times beginning in
2004 and that he received a total of about $70,000 from Chinese intelligence
officers. His plea agreement called for a sentence of 48 months in prison.

2010 Dec 18

Pakistan's top spy agency denied that it helped unmask the CIA's station
chief in Islamabad, dismissing speculation it was retaliating for a US
lawsuit linking the Pakistani intelligence chief to the 2008 attacks in
Mumbai, India. The station chief in Islamabad has operated as a virtual
military commander in the US war against al-Qaida and other militant groups
hidden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. His recall was made public a
day earlier.

2010

Bob
Woodward authored “Obama’s Wars.” In it he alleged that some 3,000 CIA
operatives are active in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

2011 Jan 23

In
Pakistan Sultan Amir Tarar, a former Pakistani spy who helped the Taliban
rise to power in Afghanistan, was reported to have died under captivity 10
months after he was seized in northwest Pakistan. Tarar, better known as
Col. Imam, played a major role in funneling Pakistani support and training
to Afghans fighting Soviet rule in the 1980s, a push in large part financed
by the CIA. On Feb 19 the Pakistani Taliban claimed it had killed Tarar.

2011 Feb 14

Iran’s security forces cut phone lines and blockaded the home of an Iranian
opposition leader in attempts to stop him attending a planned rally in
support of Egypt's uprising. Eyewitnesses reported sporadic clashes in
central Tehran's Enghelab or Revolution square between security forces and
opposition protesters. Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who is on a visit to
Iran, urged governments in the Middle East to listen to the demands of their
people. Student Sanee Zhaleh (26) was shot dead during the opposition rally.
Authorities later announced the arrest today of an Iranian man allegedly
working for the CIA.

2011 Mar 16

Pakistan
freed CIA contractor Raymond Allen Davis, who had shot and killed two
Pakistani men, after the US paid $2.34 million in "blood money" to the
victims' families. Davis, who was acquitted in court, claimed he acted in
self-defense when he killed the two men on the street in the eastern city of
Lahore.

2011 Mar 30

US officials revealed that the CIA has sent small teams of operatives into
rebel-held eastern Libya while the White House debates whether to arm the
opposition. The British government said Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa
Koussa had arrived in Britain from Tunisia and resigned.